Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu before entering Parliament on Tuesday. (Express Photo by Praveen Jain)
N Chandrababu Naidu, Andhra Pradesh CM and TDP supremo, fears that the fate of the no-confidence motion his party has brought against the NDA government could be used in the future as a precedent to scuttle other no-confidence motions and expressed these apprehensions in meetings with Opposition leaders Tuesday, sources said.
A week after his West Bengal counterpart and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee spent a day in Parliament holding parleys with Opposition parties, Naidu met several Opposition leaders Tuesday. Among those he met were Congress’s chief whip in Lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena minister Anant Geete, Trinamool leaders Derek O’Brien and Sudip Bandopadhyay, Ram Gopal Yadav of SP, AIADMK leader V Maitreyan and S C Mishra of BSP.
He also met some BJP MPs, including Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha and Hema Malini. Naidu tweeted: “Interacted with NCP President Sri Sharad Pawar @PawarSpeaks, JKNC President Dr Farooq Abdullah, Mr @derekobrienmp, Mr Sudip Bandyopadhyay from TMC & Congress Leader Sri @JM_Scindia, regarding no-confidence motion, highlighting the injustice done to AP for it’s ‘Special Status’.
TDP walked out of NDA last month over demand for a special category status for Andhra Pradesh. It brought a no-confidence motion against the government. The motion is supported by 80-odd MPs, Opposition has claimed, but has not been taken up by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.
Speaking to O’Brien and Bandopadhyay, Naidu reportedly expressed the apprehension that this would in the future be used as a “dangerous” precedent by “fragile” governments to subvert a trust vote and continue in government even when they did not have requisite numbers. He also thanked Trinamool for their support to the no-confidence motion. The Trinamool leaders, it is learnt, spoke to him about how big states such as Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal stand to lose out under the 15th Finance Commission because of the change of reference population from the 1971 Census to the 2001 Census.
The two parties, it is learnt, also discussed the importance of an Opposition block, with or without Congress, and of SP and BSP staying together in Uttar Pradesh. Talking about the meeting, O’Brien said: “Mr Naidu thanked the Trinamool Congress for its strong support to the no confidence motion… He also also asked the MPs to convey his warmest greetings to Mamata Banerjee”.