VIJAYAWADA:At a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is on a hunt for its AP unit’s president, party leaders seem to be having other plans. Giving credence to this view, senior BJP leader and former minister Kanna Lakshminarayana has quit the saffron party to join the YSR Congress (YSRC).
On Tuesday, Kanna Lakshminarayana submitted his resignation to primary membership of the party and is understood to have been planning to call on YSRC president YS Jaganmohan Reddy during his Praja Sankalpa Yatra in Krishna district. He will formally join YSRC on Wednesday, it is reliably learnt.After a series of meetings with his well-wishers and followers for a few days now, Lakshminarayana finally wrote a letter to BJP president Amit Shah about his decision to quit the party.When contacted by TNIE, Lakshminarayana said that he had taken the decision of quitting BJP following pressure from his followers.
Though at one point of time it was thought that Lakshminarayana would be made BJP’s AP chief, he was ignored on the grounds that he was a newcomer to the party.Followers of Lakshminarayana say that the BJP leadership had ignored their leader and never considered his vast political experience.
Stating the Lakshminarayana had made all efforts to strengthen BJP in the State and went harsh on the State government and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu when he began cornering the Centre, his followers said that BJP had never considered the suggestions of their leader.
Expressing dissatisfaction over top BJP leadership, Lakshminarayana said the people of Andhra Pradesh are up in arms against the saffron party as it failed to extend the Special Category Status (SCS) promised to the State. It is learnt that some more leaders of the saffron party are planning to leave the party in the days to come. They are of the view that BJP is losing its base in the State in the aftermath of the TDP coming out of the BJP-led NDA government.