Former chief minister and Telugu Desam president N Chandrababu Naidu has been accusing the Congress and other political parties of vote-bank and opportunistic politics. Hardly a day after he accused the Congress president, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, of adopting vote-bank politics by not choosing to visit the kin of the victims of Mecca Masjid and twin bomb blasts, Chandrababu Naidu deputed his senior party functionary and MP SM Lal Jan Basha to meet senior Muslim religious leader Moulana Hameeduddin Aquil.
Moulana Aquil had supported the Congress during the last Assembly elections. Now after the police raided his madarasa, Darul-Uloom Hyderabad, the Moulana changed his loyalty and announced that he saw no difference between the "communal" BJP and the "secular" Congress.
This statement was enough for Chandrababu Naidu. So he sent Lal Jan Basha to the residence of Moulana Aquil to seek his support. Basha told the Islamic cleric that the TD, when it was in power for nine years, had treated Muslims well and there was no police harassment.
It seems the TD wants to win the support of the Moulana and through him the support of the Muslim community before the next State Assembly polls due in May 2009. If this is not politics of opportunism and politics of vote-bank, what is it? Only Chandrababu Naidu should tell.
