The Telugu Desam Party has started evaluating its options, including an exit from the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, with the Union Budget giving little to Andhra Pradesh.
After expressing total disappointment with the Centre for offering “nothing in the Budget for Andhra Pradesh”, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu chaired the party’s coordination committee meeting on Friday, at which he is reported to have displayed his anger and resentment over the way the BJP had ‘slighted the State.’ Mr. Naidu, it is learnt, recalled that the decision to support the BJP in the 2014 general election was solely intended to get the Centre’s full support in hand-holding the fledgling State. The Congress was decimated in Andhra Pradesh after betraying the people by pushing through an “unscientific bifurcation,” leaving the State impoverished, he said.
He was hinting at the BJP meeting the same fate if it tried to carry forward the same legacy. A senior party leader said the Chief Minister even pointed to the defeat of the BJP in Rajasthan in the recent by-elections, saying it was a reflection of people’s changing mood.
With Mr. Naidu himself in a combative mood, party leaders started echoing similar feelings. A formal meeting of the Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party is scheduled for Sunday to chalk out a strategy to pressure the NDA government.
TDP MP from Narasaraopet Rayapati Sambasiva Rao fired the first salvo offering to resign, if Mr. Naidu directed him to do so, to protest against the Centre’s injustice to the State.
Another TDP member, T.G. Venkatesh, told a local TV channel that if the Centre continued to show stepmotherly treatment towards the State, the party would not hesitate to move out.
“They are underestimating Mr. Naidu’s political experience and testing his patience. It is not as if we will take a decision tomorrow. We might do it in phases, first raising the issue in Parliament, then pulling out the Ministers, resigning from Parliament and lastly saying goodbye to the alliance. What is the use of continuing in the alliance when it does not benefit the State,” he asked.
Meanwhile the State Cabinet too reportedly discussed the options before the TDP and the implications of severing ties with the BJP — including the flow of funds from the Centre, especially for Polavaram, the national irrigation project, one of the few to get assured allocation.
The TDP government is under pressure from the Opposition YSR Congress Party and the Congress for failing to extract benefits from the Centre, starting with the Special Category Status. Leaders of both the parties feel if the TDP had insisted and taken a firm stand on the SCS, the BJP would not have meted out such treatment. Instead of holding out threats, the TDP reaped the harvest of its support to the BJP and took things lying down for four long years, they say.
On Friday, YSRCP MP V. Vijay Sai Reddy said the TDP had woken up after sleeping for four long years.
