HYDERABAD: TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu has announced that his party will not pull out of the NDA and would instead adopt a ‘PPP’ (plead, pursue and petition) approach to convince Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accord special status to the Andhra Pradesh.
The AP Chief Minister said that his party MPs would submit a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue and intensify their “pressure-mounting” exercise on the centre by holding protests in the Parliament complex from Monday.
The announcement comes in the wake of Naidu’s much publicised emergency meeting with his party MPs in Vijayawada on Sunday, called in the wake of growing protests by the opposition parties seeking special status for AP.
Naidu told mediapersons that his party did not want to violate the “coalition Dharma”. “Our party MPs will first meet the Prime Minister to urge him to accord special status to AP. Depending on PM’s response, we will decide our next course to extract the state’s pound of flesh from Centre,” he said.
According to sources, in the meeting, Naidu had rejected the proposal to sever ties with the BJP and had called it “counterproductive”.
Naidu reportedly rejected TDP Union Ministers Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Y Sujana Chowdary’s offer to quit their posts. It is said that the Chief Minister will be communicating with his MPs via teleconference everyday to react to the centre’s response over the issue.
TDP MP JC Diwakar Reddy had created a storm on the eve on the TDPP meeting by predicting that TDP-BJP alliance would not last. He remarked: “I hope that this fragile relationship between TDP and BJP will end by next March, if not now. Modi is afraid of CM Naidu and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar because both of them are capable of bringing all regional parties under one umbrella. Modi appears to be planning to suppress Naidu.”