TDP MPs meet Naidu, seek disqualification of their colleagues who joined BJP

Five Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MPs, including three from Lok Sabha, Friday met Rajya Saba chairman M Venkaiah Naidu and demanded the disqualification of their party's four members of the Upper House who joined the BJP and sought a merger of the TDP Legislature Party with it. According to sources, the five TDP parliamentarians sought to challenge the plea by their four colleagues who quit the party to join the BJP on Thursday.

The sources said the Rajya Sabha Chairman has taken cognisance of the developments relating to the legislature parties of TDP and BJP which happened under sections 4 of the Anti-Defection Law, which is a deemed provision. They added that further to the chairman taking cognisance of this development, the Rajya Sabha secretariat has updated the position regarding the strength of the BJP and the TDP in the Upper House.

The BJP now has a strength of 75 and the TDP two in the Rajya Sabha. Three TDP Lok Sabha MPs Jayadev Galla, Srinivas Kesineni and Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, and two Rajya Sabha MPs Ravindra Kumar Kanakamedala and Thota Seetharama Lakshmi said the chairman should disqualify the four RS TDP members. who quit the party to join the BJP.

Four TDP MPs in Rajya Sabha -- Y S Chowdary, C M Ramesh, Garikapoati Mohan Rao and T G Venkatesh -- met Venkaiah Naidu Thursday and handed him a letter seeking the merger of TDP Legislature Party with the BJP with immediate effect, under Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India. "We would like to highlight that the four TDP MPs of Rajya Sabha have neither the authority nor are empowered to merge the TDP Legislature Party in Rajya Sabha with the BJP," their plea to RS Chairman said, adding that the TDP will separately move another plea seeking their disqualification.

While Chowdary was the chairman of the TDP Legislature Party, Ramesh was his deputy. This happened at a time when TDP supremo and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu is away in Europe. He has sought to downplay the development saying his party will come back as such crises are not new to the party and have happened in the past too.

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said, "The whole process has been completed today and the Rajya Sabha chairman's office has informed us that these four names have been added to BJP list. They will now be recognised as BJP members in Rajya Sabha."