A senior journalist was ridiculed when he predicted somewhere in 2012 that Nara Chandrababu Naidu would join hands with the Congress. He wrote a piece to TOI’s Hyderabad edition and painstakingly tried to explain Naidu’s nonconformist politics that flows like water and fills into any shape of container.

What sounded incredible six years ago is the present day’s reality. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is now a part of the Congress- Prajakumtami, a rainbow coalition of TDP, Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and CPI formed to fight the assembly polls against the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in Telangana. Naidu with gay abandon went around campaigning for Congress candidates in the fledgling state. Those who sniggered at the veteran scribe are now nodding as if they have come to terms with it.

Naidu may have his justification to his expedient politics.

The ardent fans of Nandamury Taraka Rama Rao must have taken aback by Naidu’s move since they know very well that NTR founded the TDP on the very basis of anti-Congress ideology, with a pledge to root out the national party. They didn’t expect it of somebody who built the party stronger on the same ideological basis after he took over from his father-in-law. While the TDP severing ties with the BJP-led NDA was understandable, Naidu moving closer to Congress was unfathomable.

Considering the anger of the people of Seemandhra, who still feel betrayed by the Congress which engineered the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, it is easy to think that Naidu was risking his party’s prospects in AP in the next year’s elections. Remember the grand old party ended up scoring zero in both assembly and Lok Sabha elections in 2014. Such was the fury of the voters.

But, Naidu seems to be trying to convince the Andhra voters that the BJP ditched the state and as an option, he is betting on the Congress which has promised the special status to Andhra Pradesh. Anyway, the regional party has no other choice but to align either with the Congress or BJP for the 2019 general elections as the third front is not taking shape.

Although Naidu’s move might have dismayed a few, those who are following his politics from 1978, when he was a Congress MLA, are not really surprised. Congress. A cursory glance of his political journey spanning about sixty years indicates that Naidu has all along followed a principle that no party is ‘untouchable’ in politics. He is now training guns on K Chandrasekhar Rao and his party TRS, but he had qualms aligning with KCR in 2009 polls. He chose to set aside the bitter rivalry with Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and joined force with his YSR Congress Party when Jagan moved no-trust motion against the N Kirankumar Reddy-led Congress government in 2011, in the undivided AP assembly. Not to forget how he played pivot of the ruling national alliances National Front, United Front, NDA all led by different parties on different occasions. He returned to the BJP-led NDA just before 2014 elections before quitting it to join the Congress-led alliance ahead of 2019 polls.

If striking friendship with anyone in the power at the Centre, irrespective of hue, is an avowed strategy for a regional satrap, then Chandrababu Naidu is the one who is following it to the hilt. He might have hard learnt it from MGR and M Karunanidhi from the neighbouring state.