The Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president, N. Raghuveera Reddy, said the party was successful in making the Special Category Status (SCS) the agenda of the State forcing the ruling TDP and YSR Congress to join the issue with them.
Addressing a press conference here, he said the TDP and YSRC were behaving like faction groups targeting each other than questioning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for failing to meet the aspirations of five crore people of A.P. “Both the parties are fighting for seats and not for special status to the State.”
He ridiculed the all-party meeting called by the government on SCS and asked why the TDP and YSRC did not join the Congress efforts of collecting one crore signatures and also when it raised the issue frequently in the Lok Sabha. He said the party was abstaining from the second all-party meeting as the Chief Minister failed to respond to their suggestion in the first meeting that a combined delegation of all the parties should be taken to New Delhi to send a strong message to the Central government. Mr. Reddy said Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan set a bad precedent by not taking up the no-confidence motion while the Prime Minister preferred to elude debate fearing that the dissident leaders of BJP may vote for the motion.
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Taking objection to the reported claims of Prime Minister that he was being targeted because of his caste, he said the country has not seen a Prime Minister who was using caste to cover up his failures.