Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh, since its founding in 1982 by N.T.R. stood for two things: Telugu atma gauravam and communal harmony. NTR as well as his successor and present Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu often prided themselves for having no communal riots during the Telugu Desam rule. The credentials now do not hold ... because of the recent communal riots in the old city of Hyderabad ..

.. Naidu had never anticipated that the greatest setback to TD's credibility would come from a pamphlet of A4 size with a badly scrawled sketch and few sentences in equally bad Hindi. The authors of the pamphlet apparently did not feel that necessity of printing such explosive matter and circulated it after cyclostyling. When on June 1, the first of the pamphlets, derogatory to Islam hit Shamshergunj, a mixed population locality about 2 kms. from Charminar, there was an instant furor ... Both the Chief Minister and the City Police Commissioner have admitted that the police failed to respond to the situation on time for though the mischief-makers kept circulating the pamphlet in other areas of the communally sensitive old city for full five days escalating tension, the police did nothing to contain the situation. And the pent up anger of the minorities burst forth on Friday when a section of the crowd emerging after prayers at the Mecca Masjid, attacked passersby and set fire to public and private properties. The police say that they had come well-prepared ...

Within less than an hour they had set fire to 26 buses and injured 42 persons including five policemen. The police failure is highlighted by two other developments. Four days prior to the trouble, all the Urdu newspapers were reporting about the pamphlet issue and had even warned that it would lead to trouble unless the mischief  was contained. The Intelligence had alerted the city police about the dangerous implications of the pamphlet. But the city police ... chose to downplay the threat perception.

Naidu's image as a careful planner and able administrator has suffered a serious jolt due to the riots ..

Though Naidu went around the old city twice and  participated in a peace rally besides announcing a number of sops, the Muslims feel that they have been discriminated against. Similarly they say that though members from the majority community and elements of the BJP were involved in the attack on minorities, not a single BJP leader was arrested. The Naidu administration chose to arrest only MLAs and workers belonging to MIM while the BJP leaders were allowed to go around the city freely ...

Though politically, TDP has very little stake in the old city and any further alienation of minorities in old city would not alter the party's electoral prospects, the impact among the Muslims elsewhere in the State could be significant. The Muslims account for 9.83 per cent of the total electorate and are in a position of tilting balance in many Assembly constituencies ...