Many Congress managers are petrified with the possibility of actor-turned-DMDK-chief Vijayakanth joining his former colleague J Jayalalitha. This coalition, Congress privately fears, could sweep the forthcoming assembly polls in Tamil Nadu. In the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, these managers are just as relaxed after a well-knit plot, involving another southern superstar, reached its expected climax.
Just as his cine career was carefully crafted, mostly with the help of his brother-in-law and producer, Allu Aravind, his plunge in politics was also tacitly guided — by the Congress. The party desperately wanted to dent the Opposition vote bank and weaken Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) before the elections in 2009. Andhra Pradesh had a major contribution in the return of the Congress to the Centre in 2004. After five years, it was even more important for the Congress to keep its tally high in the state, which has 42 representatives in the Lok Sabha, and retain its government in Hyderabad.
Dasari Narayana Rao, then minister of state, played a key role in convincing Chiranjeevi to float a party that would essentially take a lot of Kapu vote away from Naidu. Rao was a former actor and producer and knew Chiranjeevi from his early days. His personal clout with the actor came in handy for the Congress. Many in the ruling establishment also claim that M K Narayanan, then national security advisor and currently a governor, also had a role in Chiranjeevi’s political debut.
It didn’t take long for the megastar of Telugu cinema to realise that his second career option had not clicked. In the initial days of his yatra, the star managed to draw huge crowd wherever he went. But it didn’t reflect well on the voting machines and Chiranjeevi managed to win just 18 of the 294 seats in the Assembly elections. The star himself contested in two constituencies and lost from his hometown.
Congress sources in Delhi claim that Chiranjeevi is already disillusioned and has realised he has lost a lot of money in this venture. He wanted to exit PRP and concentrate more on his acting career. The local producers had also been urging him to give more time to films.
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A year ago, in Vijayawada, Chiranjeevi had to promise at a distributors’ meet that he would do at least one film a year. He had just five releases since 2005.
Even as the embattled Congress would benefit from the addition of at least 15 MLAs to its kitty and might reward Chiranjeevi with a Rajya Sabha berth, the Telugu bidda had, perhaps, set too high an aim for himself. No doubt that he is an icon and has a huge fan following. But he certainly did not have the stature or political acumen of an N T Rama Rao. Chiranjeevi is a popular actor, but NTR was of a different league. Chiranjeevi’s films essentially carry social messages, but NTR deliberately chose to portray mythological figures and made fans worship him like a demi-God. A popular story in the Third Front circle goes like this: Once, in a press conference of Third Front in Delhi, NTR came in dressed like Lord Shiva. He found a chair next to communist patriarch Jyoti Basu. A puzzled Basu asked NTR: “Are you going to some film studio?”
In his new studio, called the Congress, Chiranjeevi will find in difficult to remain a superstar. There already are enough factions in the Andhra Pradesh unit of the party and forces for and against Telangana are not likely to spare much space for him. Also, the Congress is not known for allowing its regional leaders to prosper in larger-than-life images. May be, Chiru has sacrificed his party to get a bigger role just for himself in the ruling party at the Centre.