BackChandrababu Naidu finds himself mired in cash-for-votes controversy
The leak comes a day before the Naidu government completes a year in office
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Pro-Telangana news channel T-News late on Sunday evening broadcast an audio tape of a purported conversation between Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Elvis Stephenson, a nominated member of the legislative assembly (MLA).
The leak comes a day before the Naidu government completes a year in office. T-News is owned by Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), the ruling party in Telangana.
What is the controversy all about?
In the tapped phone call, a voice claimed to be that of Naidu says that whatever has been promised to Stephenson will be “honoured." There is no mention of elections to the Telangana legislative council, the state’s upper house that’s at the epicentre of the cash-for-vote controversy.
The controversy began when the Telangana Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) caught A. Revanth Reddy, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) deputy leader in the Telangana assembly, allegedly offering ₹ 50 lakh to Stephenson to vote for the TDP’s candidate in the legislative council elections the next day. The amount was allegedly an advance payment for a ₹ 5 crore deal.
The ACB said it acted on a tipoff by Stephenson. ACB director general A.K. Khan told reporters that Stephenson filed a written complaint after two days of negotiations between him and TDP members. The ACB then laid a trap at the house of Stephenson’s son.
The sting operation was carried out on 31 May. The video from the operation shows Reddy and his aides walking in with a bag containing money. In the conversation that follows, Reddy refers to a “boss", without naming anyone, nearly 20 times. The ACB swoops in and arrests Reddy and his accomplices. Reddy accuses Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao of framing him, at the time of his arrest.
Telangana ACB denies any role in releasing the video tapes to the media.
Elections to the Telangana legislative council, the state’s upper house, took place the following day, on Monday on 1 June in which five TRS members won. None of TDP’s candidates were elected.
As political circles were abuzz with who the “boss" referred to by Reddy is, Telangana home minister Nayani Narasimha Reddy claimed in Warangal on 3 June that the ACB possessed tapes of phone calls between Naidu and Stephenson.
Naidu’s spokesperson Parakala Prabhakar calls the phone tap “illegal", and says the alleged phone conversation is the result of clever use of technology culled from Naidu’s speeches.
Within hours of Naidu’s tapped phone leaks, ABN Andhra Jyothy, a news channel close to Naidu, released audio clips of an alleged conversation between Wyra MLA Banoth Madan Lal and Wyra deputy superintendent of police Rami Reddy. In the tape they discuss K.T. Rama Rao, Telanga chief minister Chandrasekhara Rao’s son, allegedly offering Rs3 crore to TDP MLAs to woo them to defect to TRS. Madan Lal himself defected to TRS from YSR Congress Party in September.
Rama Rao, the state information technology and Panchayati Raj minister, took to Twitter to deny wrongdoing and openly challenged Naidu to undergo a lie-detector test in public.
Why is it significant?
With state legislative council elections usually passing unnoticed, the high stakes game for the low-key elections came as a surprise. The video tapes confirmed the public’s worst suspicion—that huge sums of money may have changed hands in the election.
The tapes put not just the Telugu Desam Party but also the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on the backfoot. TDP is a member of NDA. At a time when clean politics is an issue across the country, there will be significant pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a stand on the alleged cash-for-vote affair involving Naidu. Modi made corruption one of his main campaign issues in last year’s general election.
More importantly, the allegedly tapped conversations threaten to sully Naidu’s image as a clean politician, a description he often uses when comparing himself with his political foe in Andhra Pradesh Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Jagan Reddy is already being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for alleged quid pro quo dealings when his father, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was the chief minister of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh.
This is one of the few instances where a chief minister has found themselves at the centre of an alleged bribery scandal. The fact that the operation was carried out by a government agency of a neighbouring state charges an already tense political atmosphere between the two Telugu-speaking states.
It also raises questions over whether the Telangana ACB received political sanction to go ahead with the operation. The brazen use of affiliated media outlets to leak stories has also raised eyebrows.
TDP leaders have already complained to Andhra Pradesh governor E.S.L. Narasimhan that the TRS government was misusing the official machinery to hit out at political rivals. The other side, meanwhile, says that TRS increased its strength in Telangana assembly from 63 MLAs to 76 over the past year, based on defections from different parties including the TDP.
The phone taps and traps laid by Telangana ACB on political rivals of the ruling party threaten to increase friction between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The states have been at loggerheads over the past year on several issues, ranging from sharing of water and electricity to cross-border taxation. In fact, the police of the two states fought a pitched battle in February over sharing of water from Nagarjuna Sagar Dam.
What next for the TDP and Naidu?
The audio tapes have pushed TDP and Naidu into a corner. If TDP accuses the ACB of tapping the chief minister’s phone, it will be a tacit admission that the recordings are authentic. On the other hand, will it press for a forensic analysis to prove that the voice in the tapped phone call was not Naidu’s?
The bigger question doing the rounds in political circles is whether the Telangana ACB will name Naidu in the chargesheet or not. That could be a seriously drain on Naidu’s energy and time, and dent his image, as he struggles to revive the economy of new Andhra Pradesh.
TRS, YSR Congress and the Congress are sure to use this episode to hit out at the AP chief minister.
Most importantly, Naidu will have to keep his flock together. TDP has a significant base in Telangana, primarily backed by a loyal cadre it has built over the decades. TRS is eyeing this chunk to bolster its strength ahead of the 2019 assembly elections.
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