How Maharashtra events are 1984 redux, and why NCP needs to reinvent itself

The 1984 political events hold lessons for the BJP in the current Maharashtra stand-off

In July 1984, NT Rama Rao, the then new chief minister of Andhra Pradesh whose Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had won the 1983 Assembly polls with 199 of the 294 seats (a decisive victory by any standards), left for the US for heart surgery. 

In less than a month, Governor Ram Lal Thakur, obviously on instruction from then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, installed NTR’s finance minister, Nadendla Bhaskara Rao, as chief minister, engineering a ‘split’ in the TDP. It was a plan that was worked upon for months. Bhaskara Rao claimed support of 92 MLAs (which soon became 95) of the