Balakrishna vs Chiranjeevi or Babai vs Abbai

Nandamuri Balakrishna recently had verbal diarrhoea. For some days he went on attacking Megastar Chiranjeevi for no apparent reason. While surprising everyone with his provocation and belligerence, subsequent Nandamuri Balayya road shows implied as though elections are round the corner. For some reason Chiru did not care Balayya and apparently termed him a child.

On going through the entire episode, I wondered if Balayya is really after Chiru or trying to position himself in Telugu Desam Party to cut someone else to the size?

Well, let's consider this logic. Chiru is a small leader now, in a big Congress ocean. Having merged his Praja Rajyam into Congress, right now Chiru is endeavouring to establish himself a strong political force. As it stands, Chiru is not a big treat to TDP. With his track record, it is doubtful if he would be get re-elected from Tirupathi when next election results are counted.

This is a well known fact to all including Balayya. Also the fact that, elections are at least 2 years away, there is no point in wasting his time and energy on seemingly irrelevant Chiru. At the same time, Balayya knows that he does not have time and energy to roam the state faithfully like Jagan to gain sympathy and votes.

Then, there must some serious reason. Now that Chiru moved into Congress, on the face of it - Congress is having a ready crowd puller. In case of TDP, after the disastrous Balayya campaign in 2009 and having become a laughing stock, TDP depended heavily on NTR Jr.  Since then, Jr NTR political graph hit a right note. There was a public perception that, if he molds well, NTR Jr is potential TDP leader.

Things would have been normal but for the maverick behaviour of NTR Jr father Nandamuri Harikrishna. After apparent coup d'etat things went awfully wrong and, in the end - Harikrishna was forced a truce with wily Chandrababu Naidu. With all the political volatility in the state, Naidu cannot bet on fickle Harikrishna for future support. With the extended and closer relationship between Chandrababu Naidu and Balakrishna - Naidu wanted to use Balayya to cut NTR Jr and in turn his brother in law Harikrishna to the size.

This one shot, two birds strategy would also help to groom Nara Lokesh into TDP leadership shoes.

Naidu and Balayya were though partially successful, by using Chiranjeevi they were able to test the waters.

In the end battle lines are clearly drawn - time would tell who will prevail eventually. For now, Harikrishna is clearly do more harm to NTR Jr than any favour.