NEW DELHI: TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday took exception to PM Modi attacking him while praising Telangana CM K Chandrashekar Rao as “more mature”.

“I am senior to the PM himself. I became CM in 1995 while Modi became the CM of Gujarat in 2001,” said Naidu.

During the debate on no-trust motion on Friday, Modi had said that while K Chandrashekhar Rao had after the division of ertswhile Andhra Pradesh shown maturity as CM, Naidu indulged in rank opportunism. PM also said he had warned Naidu that his conduct had rendered him vulnerable to YSR Congress. A day after the debate on the no-confidence motion in Parliament, moved by TDP, Naidu travelled to the national capital on Saturday to assert that it was a battle between “morality and majority”. “The government may have won by a majority (of numbers) but morality was on our side,” Naidu said.

Naidu dismissed BJP’s claim that there was “no-trust among the opposition parties and that there would be a scramble for who would be their leader” and said the parties had joined hands to fight the Modi-led BJP government.

Reacting to PM and home minister Rajnath Singh ’s ridicule of TDP and other parties for seeking a trust vote against a majority government, Naidu said, “Does BJP have unity… political parties come together for a common cause ... in national interest, we will work together and work out the future course… numbers decide politics in our democracy.”

Asked about a leader who can take on Modi, Naidu said, “It is the people who decide who is strong or weak, depending on what they are getting... today people are unhappy.” Contesting Modi’s remark that special status cannot be extended to Andhra “as the 14th Finance Commission does not allow it”, he said, “The commission says it does not have any role in it...” Naidu said his party will not join the NDA even if the BJP approaches it for the 2019 polls.

