AMARAVATI,
“Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary of Telugu Desam Party would resign on Thursday morning.” Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu made the announcement in a press conference late on Wednesday night from his state’s new capital, Amaravati
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Wednesday night announced that it is backing out of the Union Cabinet, over its insist for particular status to the state, which would have given it right to more funds from the Centre. Nevertheless, he stopped short of pulling out of the NDA.
However, he said the TDP would carry on being part of the NDA for the time being. “They (ministers) will resign in the morning. What will happen after that, we will see to that later,” he said.
“This is our right. The Centre is not fulfilling the promises it made. We have shown patience for four years. I tried to convince the Centre by all means,” CM said. “The reason we joined the BJP as part of the Central government has not been served. That is the reason we are pulling out of the government,” he added.
“The Centre has been taking one-sided decisions and our patience has run out now. When the purpose of joining the union cabinet hasn’t been fulfilled, it’s best to resign now,” he tweeted.
I tried reaching out to the Prime Minister to inform him about our decision. But sadly, he was unavailable.
— N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) March 7, 2018
Naidu said that “he tried to reach out to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inform him of the TDP’s decision as a matter of courtesy, but the PM had been unavailable.”
Union Minister Arun Jaitley said “the Centre is unable to formally bestow special status on Andhra Pradesh.” although, he said, “the Centre would ensure that it would make available just as many funds as would have been available to the Andhra Pradesh government as it would have had access to with the special status.” He recognized that “Andhra Pradesh had suffered financially as a result of the bifurcation of the state into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.” He added, “the special category status does not exist under the 14th Finance Commission.” Naidu’s announcement comes hours after
Jaitley made clear in his statement “One of the promises was, AP should be given special category status. At that time, special category state concept did exist. But, according to 14th Finance Commission, there is no special category status now to be given,”.
Naidu could not resist expressing his party’s long-standing pain pointing the debate over the bifurcation of the state. “We did not ask for our state to be split,” said N Chandrababu Naidu, clearing up the grounds for his party’s demand for special status.
The TDP’s pull-out was not out of the blue. Frictions between the partners have been growing for a while now, and have increasingly come out in the open.
