Hyderabad: Suspense continues over the renomination of Union minister Nirmala Sitaraman for the Rajya Sabha from AP with the BJP taking the support of its alliance partner, the Telugu Desam.
TD chief N. Chandrababu Naidu, while responding to a question during his interaction with the media in Delhi on Tuesday, said, “So far, there is no proposal to allot one RS seat to the BJP from the state.”
Interestingly, he made this observation after Ms Sitaraman came to the AP Bhavan and met him for a few minutes. Her present Rajya Sabha membership from AP will end on June 25.
Ms Sitaraman was elected unanimously for the two-year term caused due to the death of former CM N. Janardhan Reddy. It is not clear whether the BJP bosses will approach Mr Naidu at an appropriate time and request him to allot one seat or would Ms Sitaraman be sent to some other BJP ruled state this time.
A key functionary of BJP says they cannot rule out the possibility of Ms Sitaraman getting elected to the RS from AP again. “There is still a lot of time, Normally BJP Parliamentary Board will meet and decide on selections to the Rajya Sabha. Perhaps after the Assembly election results, either the Prime Minister or BJP president may talk to Mr Naidu, nothing can be ruled out at this stage,” he said.
According to TD sources, Mr Naidu is quite upset with the manner BJP leadership is ignoring his requests including on nominated posts by the Centre for the last two years.
“They promised to allot one Governor’s post, which they have not given, though we accommodated BJP leaders in TTD Board and other temple committees. They have not given a single post to any TD functionary, our leader (Naidu) wants reciprocation,” a senior TD leader said.
