The Telugu Desam Party will move a no-confidence motion against the Kiran Kumar Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh in the winter session of the state legislature that is expected to begin from December 1.
“We will move the no-confidence motion against the government on the farmers’ issues as well as its anti—people policies,” TDP politburo members K Yerran Naidu and Yanamala Ramakrishnudu told a press conference in Hyderabad this afternoon.
Though the TDP wanted to move a no-confidence motion in the Assembly in June, the session lasted only for a day for the election of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker.
Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy-led YSR Congress and the separatist Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) had challenged the TDP to table a no-confidence motion against the government but now the Jagan loyalists have announced that they would not vote against the Congress government.
The YSR Congress had been alleging that the Kiran Kumar Reddy government was surviving only with the support of the TDP, as the ruling and the principal opposition parties were into “match-fixing“.
“The no-confidence motion will prove, who is into match-fixing with whom,” Mr. Yerran Naidu and Mr. Yanamala remarked.
One after the other, the “so-called loyalists” of Mr. Jagan were returning to the Congress and asserting that they would not pull down the government, the TDP leaders pointed out. .
“One day, Mr. Jagan himself will merge with the Congress,” they claimed.
However, the no-confidence motion is not likely to not pose any threat to the ruling Congress government, as the TDP only has 83 members in the 294-member AP Assembly.
If the TRS supports the no-confidence motion, as promised, another 12 members could be added to the tally. The CPI has four and the CPI(M) one MLA and they have not yet taken a stand on the no-trust vote.
The lone Lok Satta Party MLA N Jayaprakash Narayan announced that he would support the no-confidence motion against the government.
Currently, three seats are vacant in the Assembly, following the resignation of two TDP rebels and the death of a Congress MLA.
Resignations of 79 MLAs are pending disposal, and Speaker Nadendla Manohar is expected to take a final call on them by the end of this month.
Given the support of 17 MLAs of the erstwhile Praja Rajyam Party, who now merged with Congress, and the outside support of seven Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen legislators, the government can sit pretty with its own strength technically being 155.
