Naidu to convene all-party meet soon

Amravati: The political climate in Andhra Pradesh is becoming curiouser and curiouser with every passing day. Challenges and coun­ter-challenges are taking the political drama over the special category status to the state to a new high.

While the YSRC threw a challenge to JSP president Pawan Kalyan to prevail upon the TDP to move a no-confidence motion against the NDA government and said if the TDP failed to do so, his party would move the no-confidence motion, Pawan reacted by saying that the YSRC should give the notice by March 4 and offered to mobilise support of about 80 MPs, including those of the TDP.

On the other hand, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu announced that he would convene an all-party meeting to discuss on how to take on the Union government on the issue of funds.
The TDP would decide on the date and agenda for the meeting at the coordination committee meeting to be held on Tuesday.

In all probability, the all-party meeting would be convened on Thursday or Friday. Though only TDP, YSRC and BJP are the main parties in the Assembly, Naidu wants that all the parties recognised by Election Commission should be invited for the meeting. Question now is will YSRCP and Congress attend the meeting or not. The TDP is of the opinion that no-confidence motion should be the last resort.

It should not be for narrow political gains. He said all parties should unitedly put pressure on the Central government to implement the assurances made in the AP State Re-Organisation Act 2014 and still if the Centre does not respond positively a no-confidence should be moved. He also made it clear that if the MPs resign now it would make things easy for the Centre and there would be no one to fight for the rights of the people of the state.

It may be recalled that the game of one-upmanship began with the TDP MPs taking the lead and staging a protest in both Houses of Parliament protesting against the injustice done to the state. While the TDP succeeded in getting national attention, the YSRC members continued to target the TDP and failed to attack the NDA government.

Having realised the damage it had caused to the party, the YSRC said that their members would resign from Parliament in April. This invited a largescale criticism saying that resignations in April would be of no use as no by elections would be held during the election year. This was dubbed as a “drama.”.

Reacting to it, the YSRC came up with the challenge of no-confidence motion and Jaganmohan Reddy threw a challenge to Pawan Kalyan. Interestingly, Pawan again pushed the ball into the YSRC court saying that they should clarify when they will move the no-confidence. If it is in April, it would be of no use, he said and demanded that they move a no-confidence on March 4.

He volunteered to go to Delhi on March 4 and mobilise the support. He said he would also talk to the TDP and if they don’t support they would stand exposed.  Amidst this scenario, Congress leaders intensified the protests in the state against the BJP and TDP for not implementing the promises, including the special category status and said that they would organise ‘Chalo Delhi’ soon.