Hyderabad: TD president and AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has apparently made up his mind not to field a fourth candidate from the party to prevent YSR Congress nominee V. Vijay Sai Reddy from become a Rajya Sabha member.
According to indications, there will be no elections to the Rajya Sabha from AP with the the TD taking three seats, and the YSRC one.
Mr Naidu is of the view that it will be difficult to manage if another 20 YSRC MLAs defected to the TD in the next four-five days.
He also felt that it would be a politically embarrassing to field another candidate without a single surplus vote available with the TD-BJP combine and to solely depend on the YSR Congress rebel MLAs.
If more than four valid nominations are filed, it will lead to a contest, otherwise the nominees will be unanimously elected at the end of filing of papers on May 31.
According to sources, the Chief Minister is of the view that if there’s going to be a contest, though it is easy to prepare different codes for the legislators to vote for a candidate in a particular manner, in practice it would be difficult for the MLAs to follow.
Second, since there is an open ballot system for RS polls, the YSR Congress agent will come to know which legislator has not voted for the party nominee. This might prove to be embarrassing for the ruling establishment, that it won a seat with the help of defectors.
Third, all the surplus votes are with the YSR Congress, and the strength of TD-BJP is sufficient only for three candidates to win.
Fourth, encouraging defection of almost 40 legislators from the opposition also appears to be difficult as of now. Fifth, whoever is decided as the fourth candidate, from the TD or as an Independent, would have to spend tonnes of money, which ultimately may lead to ruling party legislators dema-nding their pound of flesh from the official candidates. Last, if everything does not go as per the codes, it may boomerang on the official candidates as well.
In a related development, TD sources said BJP president Amit Shah would formally ask Mr Naidu, when the two meet in Guwahati on Tuesday, to support Union minister for commerce Nirmala Sitara-man for a second term from AP.
Sources indicated that Mr Naidu may not refuse the request coming from the BJP national president at a time when several issues of the AP government are pending with the Centre for approvals. Sources said if Mr Naidu refuses the request, it will go against the spirit of alliance.
Union parliamentary affairs minister M. Venkaiah Naidu will be filing papers for the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka for a record fourth time on May 26.
The Karnataka state BJP unit on Sunday passed an unanimous resolution requesting the national leadership to offer the lone RS seat to Mr Venkaiah Naidu.
