New Delhi, Apr 4 (NIE): On his first visit to the national capital after severing ties with the NDA, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu met his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal among other opposition leaders on Tuesday to drum up support on pressuring the Centre to give a special category status to the state. In his meeting with Kejriwal, Naidu is likely to have explained the injustice being meted out to Andhra Pradesh despite assurances of a special status in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act.
The CM, who is on a two-day visit to Delhi, will also like to garner as much opposition support as possible for the no-confidence motion that is pending before Lok Sabha. The motion is supported by 80-odd MPs, Opposition has claimed, but has not been taken up by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, citing repeated disruptions and sloganeering.
Naidu’s visit comes a week after his West Bengal counterpart and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee spent a day in Parliament holding parleys with Opposition parties to forge a possible federal front against the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Naidu, however, has made it clear that his visit is “focused only on securing state’s interests” and there was “nothing political” about the visit.
Among those he met on Tuesday were Congress’s chief whip in Lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena’s 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. However, it was Naidu’s long chat with sidelined BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi that set tongues wagging. Both leaders had a chat for more than 15 minutes. As both remained tight-lipped about what they discussed, speculation was rife in BJP circles.
He also met some BJP MPs, including Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha and Hema Malini. At the end of the day, 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’.”
What has further united the opposition parties is the change of reference population from the 1971 Census to the 2001 Census under the 15th Finance Commission, due to which big states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal would each loose approximately Rs 20,000 crore each year. This issue was also discussed during Naidu’s meeting with the opposition leaders.