AMARAVATI: N. Chandrababu Naidu, the national president of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has been invited by the union government to a major meeting of all political parties on December 5 in Delhi.

The meeting, called to discuss and develop plans for the G20 summit that India will host next year, will be presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Pralhad Joshi, the Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, called Naidu and invited him to the meeting. The former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh has accepted the invitation, TDP sources said. 

At the member-nation meeting held in Bali last week, India replaced Indonesia as the G20's leader. On December 1, India will formally take over as G20 president. Prime Minister Modi had said, India would host meetings in several states and towns while serving as the G20 chair, acting as a catalyst for change on a global scale.

Naidu has been invited to a meeting by the Center twice in the past more than four years.The TDP leader was present at the conference in Delhi, which was presided over by the prime minister, to debate and decide on various programmes for "Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav."

Since the TDP was ousted from office in Andhra Pradesh in 2019, Chandrababu Naidu and Prime Minister Modi hadn't previously shared a platform.

In 2018, the TDP left the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in protest of the federal government's decision to deny Andhra Pradesh special category status.

For the 2019 elections, the Naidu-led party teamed up with the Congress party, however it was defeated by the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) in Andhra Pradesh.

Naidu had acknowledged that severing links with the NDA was a tactical error after the defeat. He has been attempting to mend fences with the BJP ever since. But the state leadership of the saffron party remained uninterested in the idea.

The actor-politician Pawan Kalyan-led Jana Sena Party (JSP), which re-joined the BJP in 2020, is eager to rebuild the TDP-BJP-JSP alliance.

Pawan Kalyan ran for the TDP-BJP coalition in 2014, but he later cut connections with both organisations. In an alliance with Left-leaning parties and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), JSP ran in the 2019 elections but lost.

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