A no holds barred bitter fight appears to be in the offing between the Telugu Desam Party and the YSRCP allegedly supported by BJP and TRS. With speculations making rounds that the notification for general elections would be issued during first week of March, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has sharpened his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and indirectly demanded his resignation.

Addressing the Non Gazetted Employees at a meeting to thank them for their cooperation in achieving 10.6 per cent growth rate for the past five years, Naidu referred to the manner in which the state has been moving forward despite non-cooperation from the Centre and remarked that it had weakened all the central institutions. He said the Centre had also failed in utilising the intelligence inputs with regard to preventing the Pulwama incident where 40 CRPF jawans lost their life.

Chief Minister recalled that Narendra Modi as Chief Minister of Gujarat said that the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should own moral responsibility and step down for the killing of army men in a terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir. The same analogy applies to Prime Minister Modi and now he should own responsibility for killing of 40 CRPF jawans, he said hinting that he should step down.

According to party sources, Naidu would now devout his full time for party activities till the elections are over. He is unlikely to participate in any official programmes either. He is giving high priority to the manifesto and is chairing meetings of the manifesto committee.

The focus of the party continues to be on youth, women and middleclass people. The manifesto will have 15 issues related to welfare of people taking family as a unit and 10 issues related to social development. It will fix a target that the minimum per capita income of an individual should be not less than Rs 4 lakh per annum and see that that the GSDP touches Rs 24 lakh crore.

He has also launched a website to invite the opinions and suggestion from various sections of people as well as other social organisations so that they can come with people’s manifesto.