TDP ministers to quit over Andhra status
Naidu says Centre’s assurance of special package not enough
As a first step, both our central ministers will resign from the Narendra Modi cabinet on Thursday morning... With regard to alliance with the BJP, we will decide on partytoparty basis later CHANDRABABU NAIDU, Andhra chief minister
HYDERABAD/NEWDELHI: The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) said on Wednesday that its ministers would quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre after failing in its bid to secure special category status for Andhra Pradesh.
The decision came amid a persistent deadlock between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the NDA, and the TDP over the issue, with the latter stalling Parliament for the third consecutive day.
The Narendra Modi government refused to give in to the demand while making placatory gestures towards its largest ally in southern India.
The TDP announced that its two ministers in the Modi government, aviation minister P Ashok Gajapati Raju and junior minister for science and technology YS Chowdhury, would quit.
Before the announcement, TDP leaders said the BJP had pushed them to a position where taking a “tough stand” was the only option left. Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu said he will take a call on whether or not to remain in the NDA before the second leg of the budget session ends.
The TDP has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and six in the Rajya Sabha. The BJP and the NDA have a comfortable majority, and the threatened pullout of TDP from the coalition would pose no crisis for the government.
“As a first step, both our central ministers will resign from the Narendra Modi cabinet on Thursday morning,” Naidu told journalists late in the night. “With regard to alliance with the BJP, we will decide on party-toparty basis later,” said the chief minister.
Naidu made the announcement after discussions with his party’s members of Parliament in Delhi through teleconference and his own cabinet ministers in the state secretariat in Amaravati, following an announcement by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi categorically ruling out special category status to Andhra Pradesh.
Naidu said Jaitley’s statement indicated that the NDA government was not interested in resolving the crisis in Andhra Pradesh and coming to the rescue of the state, which, he said, had suffered in the aftermath of its 2014 bifurcation.
“When the purpose of our joining the government is not served, we don’t have any option but to come out of it,” he said.