VIJAYAWADA: YSRC national general secretary and Rajya Sabha member V Vijaya Sai Reddy described the defection of four TDP Rajya Sabha members as the first step of those in the yellow party, who are afraid of cases registered against them.
In a tweet posted on his official twitter handle on Friday, he said TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu fearing being jailed for life if his Rs 1 lakh crore corruption gets exposed, is looking for ways to renegotiate with the BJP.
The merger of Telugu Desam Legislature Party in Rajya Sabha with the BJP was to make way clear, so he could negotiate with the BJP leadership for getting out of the cases he would face, he observed.
Echoing his party general secretary’s view on the latest development in the TDP, Deputy Chief Minister SB Amzath Basha said it was nothing but Naidu’s plan to get out of the trouble for his ‘involvement in large scale corruption’ during the previous Telugu Desam regime.
Speaking to mediapersons in Kadapa on Friday, he said unable to suffer under Naidu and his junior Pappu (Lokesh), more and more leaders would leave TDP in the coming days. He predicted that the TDP would shut up the shop in 2-3 months.
APCC general secretary Janga Gautham described the coup by the TDP Rajya Sabha members as the handiwork of BJP. He said by engineering defections from TDP, the saffron party wants to gain a foothold in AP.
He lashed out at Home Minister Amit Shah and his deputy G Kishan Reddy for being the mastermind behind the entire episode.
“It shows that BJP has no democratic values or ethics,” he criticised. At the same time, he said the development is a befitting lesson to TDP, which encouraged economic offenders for raising party funds.
On the other hand, CPI State secretary K Ramakrishna wrote a letter to Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu urging him to keep his word against defections. In the letter, he reminded Venkaiah Naidu’s comments on previous occasion against the defections and requested him to disqualify the TDP Rajya Sabha members who defected to BJP.