Ram Madhav may be BJP's candidate from Andhra Pradesh

With Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu and Nirmala Sitharaman shifting states for Raya Sabha polls, speculation is rife that BJP may field party general secretary Ram Madhav from Andhra Pradesh.
The tenure of Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu is also coming to an end and there are indications that his name could also be considered from the state.
In 2014, the TDP gave one seat to Sitharaman, Minister of State for Commerce, but the BJP this time chose to field her from neighbouring Karnataka.
The May 17 meeting between Sitharaman and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu during his trip to New Delhi had led to speculation about her re-nomination from AP.

Top BJP leader and Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu last night held a telephonic conversation with Chandrababu over the seat-sharing for Rajya Sabha biennial election slated for June 11.
Venkaiah, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, was earlier elected from Karanataka. He has shifted to Rajasthan this time though he was expected to move to Andhra Pradesh.

Venkaiah made an unscheduled visit to Hyderabad last evening and spoke to Chandrababu, who was camping in Tirupati for the TDP's Mahanadu, over phone and discussed the issue.
Venkaiah was said to have informed Chandrababu about the BJP leadership's decision to shift him to Rajasthan and Nirmala to Karnataka and wanted one seat in AP spared for "another candidate", according to sources.

With May 31 being the last date for filing nomination, TDP politburo is expected to take a decision on seat-sharing soon following which an official announcement will be made.
In all, four seats are to be filled from AP of which three will go to the ruling combine and one to the lone opposition YSR Congress.
While Satyanarayana Chowdary's candidature is almost certain, another seat may go to Hemalatha, a former MLA from Satyavedu in Chandrababu's native Chittoor district, as a woman belonging to Dalit community.
The Finance Minister appeared to be explaining the
difficulty in granting the special status while noting that special status means that 90 per cent of the expenditure of schemes will be borne by the Centre as against 60 per cent for normal states.

The Union of India should not be left financially vulnerable, he said while contending that the country's economy has been "adversely" affected by global prices, two years of drought, the 7th Pay Commission and OROP among other factors.
Explaining the division of federal revenues, Jaitley pointed out that 42 per cent of central revenues go to the states and the Centre is left with only 58 per cent to take care of defence of the country, payment of salaries, running the government, running central schemes in states among others.
"The size of the cake is limited, the size of the pie is limited," Jaitley said.

He said that under the new Finance Commission architecture, the divided state of Andhra Pradesh will get over Rs 2.06 lakh crore for the period 2015-20 as against Rs 64,575.30 crore that it wuld have otherwise got.