‘Megastar! Megastar!’ This was the chant from the nearly one million people who had gathered at Avilala near the pilgrimage town of Tirupathi on a muggy August day last year as Chiranjeevi walked up the dais to mark the launch of his political party Prajarajyam Party, evoking expectations that he could recreate the magic of the late N.T. Rama Rao (NTR) when he launched the Telugu Desam Party.

Eight months down the line, as the country readies for fresh Lok Sabha elections, and his home state Andhra Pradesh its assembly elections, the expectations are still there among his millions of fans-turned-party workers. But, more sober observers see Chiranjeevi, the megastar of Telugu films, essentially as a third alternative who can tilt the balance rather than one who can dethrone the incumbent Congress or brush aside the challenger Telugu Desam Party.

Realistically speaking, 2009 is not 1983, the year when NTR launched Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Nor is Chiranjeevi or Chiru as he is known an NTR, though there are some parallels.

Like NTR, Chiranjeevi too is from the film world, seeking to harness his massive fan following, and an on-screen/off-screen image of a do-gooder, to project himself as a political messiah. Born on 22 August 1955 in Mogalturu in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, Konidela Shiva Shankara Vara Prasad as he was christened, qualified as a cost accountant, before being bitten by the acting bug and moved to Chennai in 1976 to join the Madras Film Institute. He had to wait for three years before he got his break, and another two years before his first box office hit as a hero. After the release of his 1981 blockbuster ‘Intilo Ramayya, Vidhilo Krishnayya’ there was no looking back for the young man, who had by now taken up the screen name Chiranjeevi.

A career spanning 30 years and 148 films in Telugu, Hindi and Tamil, and seven Filmfare and three Andhra Pradesh state film awards for the best actor along the way, Chiranjeevi was really right up there as the uncrowned king of Tollywood.

And then the political bug bit.

It was around June 2007 that Chiranjeevi first sent up the test balloon, selectively planting in the media his intention of converting his huge fan following and his screen popularity into a political force. Though he did not specify whether he would join either of the mainstream parties – the Congress and the TDP – or launch his own party, the idea caught on like wildfire. As media speculation raged, he found almost instant acceptance, with a score of politicians and film personalities endorsing it. TDP leaders like Vidyadhara Rao and Nagi Reddy and a former Congress minister Harirama Jogiah, pledged their support to Chiru before he had even made up his mind.

 

The fans were almost unanimous and the media frenetic, as they pushed for an early 2008 launch of the party. But Chiranjeevi held his counsel, still seemingly hesitant to take the final plunge. Would he go the way of Rajnikanth, his counterpart across the border in Tamil Nadu, who has been on the fringe of politics for more than a decade now, but resisting the temptation to jump into the rough and tumble of politics? Or will he take a leaf out of the experience of yet another Tamil Nadu film star Vijayakanth, who only three years ago had launched his own party, Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK)?

After keeping the state in suspense for nearly a year, Chiranjeevi finally announced his intention of starting a new political party. ‘I was influenced by (former President) A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. I could have committed a Himalayan blunder if I did not enter politics. The new party will be launched next month at Tirupathi. I will unveil its name and flag at that time,’ he said in July last year.

And true to his words, his political outfit Prajarajyam Party (PRP) was launched in August that year. But barely had he launched the party that he got embroiled in a personal controversy. His 19 year old daughter Sreeja eloped with her boy friend, alleging that her family was trying to break up her relationship. Conscious of the damage that this could do to his political career, Chiru moved fast to compromise with his daughter, and gave his approval for her marriage.

One controversy out of the way, he soon found himself in another. Within days of the launch of the party, allegations about the high-handed attitude of his youngest brother and another political wannabe, Pawan Kalyan, towards party men gathered strength. But this time, Chiranjeevi put them down decisively by formally anointing Pawan Kalyan the leader of the youth wing of the party. One more controversy doused.

Now for the big test. Can Chiranjeevi do another NTR? The question will be answered in full measure when the results of the Lok Sabha and Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections are out on May 16. But the contours are already visible.

 

For one, Chiranjeevi is no NTR. The latter had a larger than life image that Chiranjeevi cannot match. Though NTR too had donned the role of different do-gooder characters on screen, it is his portrayal of Lord Krishna in several mythological movies that was embedded in the psyche of his fans and general Telugu film goers. Breaking coconuts and lighting camphor whenever he appeared on the screen was common. So were the visits to Chennai by pilgrims in their hundreds who came to have a darshan of their ‘Devudu’ after a darshan of Lord Venkateswara in Tirupathi.

More importantly, NTR emerged on the political firmament when there was a vacuum. In the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, his contemporary M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) had already established himself as a political force, and had become the chief minister for the second of his three successive terms. In Andhra Pradesh itself, there was virtually no alternative to the Congress, which had slowly but steadily started losing credibility among the people.

And driving a nail into its coffin was an incident in 1982 at the Begumpet airport in Hyderabad. The Congress chief minister of the state, T. Anjaiah, was humiliated at the airport by an upstart AICC General Secretary, Rajiv Gandhi, who was barely a few months old in politics. That incident was enough for NTR to raise the slogan of Andhra self-respect, which became a rallying point for people of the state, who were fed up with revolving door policy of the Congress high command that kept changing chief ministers, and also by the corruption that seemed to pervade the government at all levels.

Using that as the leverage, NTR launched the Telugu Desam Party in 1983 and within six months had swept the polls to become the chief minister. For his fans and now party men, Lord Krishna had taken yet another avatar – remember the words in Bhagavat Gita: Dharmasansthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge.

 

With no major political party other than the Congress on the horizon, it was easy for NTR, with his pan-Andhra appeal, to strike roots and grow. And once he came to power, the Congress unwittingly helped him grow further by using the state Governor Ramlal to dismiss the NTR government and install in his place Kona Prabhakara Rao, whom they had managed to entice to break away from the TDP with a clutch of MLAs. The national uproar over the incident forced the Congress to beat a hasty retreat and reinstate NTR. But by then NTR had grown in stature and the Congress had to wait for two more elections before it could manage a comeback.

 

The circumstances are quite different now. Unlike NTR, who had only the Congress to contend with, Chiranjeevi has to take on not only the Congress but also the TDP which is still very much well-entrenched, notwithstanding the setbacks of 2004. Chiranjeevi hopes to break the hold that these two parties have had over Andhra Pradesh for more than a couple of decades now.

That Chiranjeevi and his PRP have got the two major players worried is quite evident. This is partly reflected in the TDP’s sudden espousal of the Telengana cause after having consistently rejected it all these years. TDP’s N. Chandrababu Naidu has now teamed up with Chandrashekara Rao’s Telengana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) for the coming elections. Last time round it was the Congress which was aligned with TRS, but Rao had been forced to walk out of the alliance after Congress refused to take any steps towards creation of a separate Telengana state.

More importantly, both TDP and the Congress are now talking of fielding at least 100 candidates each from the backward classes (BCs). Politics in Andhra Pradesh has hitherto been dominated by powerful castes like the Reddys and Kammas.

But a new dimension has now been brought in by Chiranjeevi, who belongs to Kapu caste, one of the backward communities of Andhra Pradesh, and has made the political empowerment of BCs his major political agenda, forcing other major parties to sit and take note. The ‘social justice rally’ conducted by the Praja Rajyam Party at Rajamundhry in early March was a resounding success with nearly half million people from the coastal districts turning up to listen to Chiranjeevi.

Undeterred by the possibility of being reduced to a show spoiler, Chiranjeevi is projecting himself and the PRP as agents of change in the state, an alternative to the Congress, which is trying to play the developmental card, and the TDP-Left-TRS combine that is focusing on corruption.

‘Politics has degenerated into a vocation to plunder and loot the public. Instead of being the trustees – dharmadhikaris – of the people, shepherding them on to the path of progress, our governments are destroying our present and squelching the hopes of our children. Corruption engulfs us in every manner. This has to stop. For over 60 years we have been ruled by a few families belonging to a few communities; and they have, over and over, betrayed our trust. They can be stopped if the hitherto excluded segments come together – the SC, the ST, the OBC, the poor, the minorities, the disabled and women – to take power back to where it belongs: with the people,’ says Chiranjeevi.

 

His supporters believe that PRP can win the elections, or at least emerge with enough strength for Chiranjeevi to become the kingmaker and usher in an era of coalitions. He has a major following in the coastal districts of East and West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur and Visakhapatnam and large parts of Rayalseema. But these regions also happen to be strongholds of the TDP. As of now, neither the Congress nor the TDP are sure about whose votes Chiranjeevi will cut into.

Either way Chiranjeevi ends up being the scale-tilting factor. But to make a major impact in terms of the number of MLAs returned, it is time for him to prove his pan-Andhra acceptability.