Two days after Congress MLA from Chintalapudi (West Godavari district) Maddala Rajesh Kumar had boarded the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s ship, the Congress legislator from Mummidivaram (East Godavari district), Ponnada Satish Kumar, has threatened to quit the Congress.
While talking to his close aides in Mummadivaram on Wednesday, Satish took potshots at minister Pinipe Viswaroop, who also hails from East Godavari district.
The payment of compensation to the victims of gas leak from the Krishna-Godavari basin in the district by the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) is keeping Satish and the minister at loggerheads.
According to Satish, Viswaroop is making the GSPC to pay the compensation only in the minister’s constituency of Amalapuram ignoring Mummidivaram. He threatened to quit the Congress if the issue was not settled by Thursday.
Though Satish is blaming the minister for his intention to quit the Congress, his rivals say that the legislator’s crossover to the YSRCP is just a matter of time.
Interestingly, even Viswaroop’s son has been moving closely with YSRCP leaders.
JOLT TO TDP: The Telugu Desam, which is suffering a series of body blows with its legislators and leaders quitting the party in droves to join the YSRCP in the Andhra and Rayalaseema regions and the TRS in Telangana, on Wednesday received another jolt with party MLA from Gopalapuram (West Godavari district), Tenneti Vanita, announcing that she would join the YSRCP on November 4.
The moment she made her intentions of boarding the Jagan’s ship public, TDP leadership suspended her from the party.
In fact, party’s Thambalapalle (Chittoor district) MLA K Praveen Kumar Reddy met Jagan in the Chanchalguda jail and earned himself an immediate suspension from the party on Tuesday.
The name of another TDP MLA from Chittoor district, N Amarnath Reddy (Palamaner), is also doing the rounds among the probables who may join the YSRCP.
On the other hand, in the Telangana region too the TDP is witnessing an exodus from the party. Suspended TDP MLA K Hareeshwar Reddy decided to join the TRS on November 15. Another legislator suspended from the TDP, S Venugopalachary, is also understood to have decided to join the TRS.
PRESSURE ON SPEAKER: With legislators cutting across party lines changing their political allegiance ahead of the 2014 general election, pressure is once again mounting on Assembly speaker Nadendla Manohar.
Several politicos think that it will be not an easy task for the speaker to either accept the resignations of defecting MLAs or initiate disciplinary action against them as any such course might lead to bypolls in the respective constituencies.
With the 2014 polls just 18 months away, holding bypolls would be an annoying task for the Election Commission as the tenure of those “would-be elected lawmakers” would hardly last one and a half years.
The speaker has, in fact, expressed his displeasure on several occasions in the recent past over frequent holding of byelections which were necessitated by MLAs’ resignations. For that reason he has not accepted the resignations of Sujana Venkata Krishna Ranga Rao (Bobbili) and Alla Kali Krishna Srinivas alias Nani (Eluru), who were elected on Congress ticket in 2009 and resigned from the Assembly as well as the Congress on June 4 to join the YSRCP.
Against the backdrop of these political migrations, all eyes are on the speaker’s future course of action.
Pressure is equally mounting on TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu to introduce a “no confidence” motion against the state government in the Assembly as demanded by the YSRCP.