Andhra Pradesh Ministers Kamineni Srinivas (Health) and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao (Endowments) resigned from their posts reciprocating the withdrawal of P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Y.S. Chowdary from the Union Cabinet, on Thursday.
A.P. and Telangana Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan accepted the resignations within hours of the letters being forwarded by the office of the Chief Minister.
The step was taken, which was planned on Wednesday night itself, after the green signal from the high command, which apparently came barely a couple of hours before Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu presented the budget.
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Dr. Srinivas and Mr. Rao submitted their resignations to Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and stayed away from the special Cabinet meeting too.
With this, the BJP-TDP alliance ended on a bitter note as efforts on both sides to salvage the situation failed with Union Minister Arun Jaitley’s latest comments on the implementation of the A.P. Reorganisation Act and Special Category Status (SCS) pushing the relationship to the brink and now to final breakup.
Dr. Srinivas stated in his letter that the differences and disagreements that had surfaced of late in spite of the existence of able, hard-working and delivery-oriented governments at the Centre and in the State, pained every right-thinking individual.
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Both MLAs were all praise for the leadership of Mr. Naidu, and maintained that there were a lot of misgivings on the Central government’s contribution to the development of the State.
BJP has four MLAs in A.P.: Kamineni Srinivas (Kaikaluru), Manikyala Rao (Tadepalligudem), P. Vishnu Kumar Raju (Visakhapatnam North) and Akula Satyanarayana (Rajahmundry Urban).