Hyderabad: Reeling under a severe electoral drubbing, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) suffered a major jolt this week as four out of six of its Rajya Sabha members joined the ruling BJP, hinting at further realignment of political forces in Andhra Pradesh in the wake of the resounding victory of the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSR Congress last month. More of the party’s leaders are expected to join BJP in the coming days.
Interestingly, a coup of sorts in TDP was led by former Union minister of state (MoS) Y. Satyanarayana Chowdary, who is popularly known as Sujana Chowdary as the founder of the multi-billion rupees Sujana group which ran into trouble of late. The remaining three MPs are C.M. Ramesh, Garikapati Rama Mohan Rao and T.G. Venkatesh.
BJP working president J.P. Nadda and general secretary Bhupender Yadav accompanied the defected RS MPs to Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu’s residence on Thursday evening, where TDP leaders submitted a letter seeking merger with the BJP as per the Fourth Para of the 10th Schedule of the Constitution which stipulates two-thirds of members of a party in a legislative house can merge with any other party.
Nadda gave his party’s acceptance to the merger. The Vice-President who chairs Rajya Sabha is yet to issue a notification recognising their merger, but sources close to the MPs said the formality will be completed by the weekend. Once this is done, they can sit with BJP members in the Rajya Sabha where the ruling party falls short of a simple majority to pass its important laws.
The four MPs called on BJP president and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday night and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday morning. The PM warmly welcomed them into the party, thus sealing their merger with the BJP. Now, the TDP is left with two RS MPs—Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar and Thota Sitarama Lakshmi.
Of the four defected MPs, the term of Chowdary is up to mid-2022, while that of Ramesh and Venkatesh goes on till mid-2024. Rama Mohan Rao’s term, along with that of Sitarama Lakshmi, lasts till April 2020. Ravindra Kumar can continue till April 2024. As TDP doesn’t have MLAs to win even a single RS seat, the party’s strength in the Upper House will be only one after next April.
TDP has three MPs in the Lok Sabha—Galla Jayadev (Guntur), Kesineni Nani (Vijayawada) and K. Rammohan Naidu (Srikakulam)—besides 23 MLAs in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly. There are strong reports that some more MPs and MLAs are likely to join BJP in the coming days, as there is a churning in the party circles over their leader Chandrababu Naidu’s capabilities to withstand the onslaught of Jagan in the coming years.
Naidu, who moved heaven and earth to retain his power as Chief Minister in Andhra Pradesh in April elections, not only presided over the worst defeat of the TDP by managing only 23 MLAs, but also had to put up with the drubbing of his son and Minister Nara Lokesh from Mangalagiri, where the new capital Amaravati came up. Lokesh’s defeat, like that of Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, had dealt a blow to the morale of TDP cadre in Andhra.
The sudden defection of TDP’s RS MPs has triggered a wave of convulsions across the party and outside. Former CM and TDP president Naidu, who is on a brief family vacation in Europe this week, reacted to the development and claimed that the defections would not cause harm to the organisation and that the cadre were solidly with the party which had seen many a crisis in the past.
In a release from abroad, Naidu told the party leaders and cadre not to be shaken by the defections and said that the party would continue to fight for the cause of the people. He assailed the BJP for encouraging defections from his party. Several of TDP’s former ministers and leaders, too, attacked the BJP for merging their MPs.
However, their arguments didn’t hold ground as Naidu had admitted into his party as many as 23 MLAs of YSR Congress in the last five years and made four of them ministers too. Ironically, a TDP MLC Buddha Venkanna openly condemned Naidu’s decision to encourage defections in the past and said: “Our leader did a mistake then and now BJP too did a mistake,” he told media in Vijayawada on Friday.
The background of the defected MPs, too, came into focus as at least two of them—Chowdary and Ramesh—are under the scanner of CBI, Income Tax (I-T) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) for the last one year. I-T and ED had carried out at least half a dozen raids on the companies and residences of Chowdary and Ramesh and seized assets worth of around Rs 250 crore and some documents.
YSR Congress senior leader and its Rajya Sabha leader K. Vijayasai Reddy said that Naidu had cleverly sent his MPs to BJP to save their ill-gotten wealth and escape from the cases of ED and I-T. However, this was denied by Chowdary who spoke to media at his residence in Delhi in the last two days and said that there were only some allegations and complaints against him, but not any cases. “I told several times that my decision to join BJP has nothing to do with the cases against me.” Ramesh, too, said the same and maintained that he would answer the investigating agencies.
BJP general secretary and RS MP G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, too, waded into this controversy and said that the cases against these MPs would not be affected by their joining BJP.