TDP breaks ranks over House panels

Party yet to follow NDA's move

Signalling a clear split in the Opposition, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is yet to withdraw its members' from the standing and consultative committees of Parlimanet.

The TDP has five members in the Rajya Sabha and nine in the Lok Sabha. Leader of the TDP parlimanteray party Yerran Naidu confirmed to the Business Standard that the TDP had not followed the NDA line on the issue.

The NDA constituents at a meeting yesterday had decided to withdraw their members from all parliamentary committees in reaction to a recorded condemnation of the Opposition by Leader of the House (Lok Sabha) Pranab Mukherjee.

"We were not invited to the NDA meeting yesterday," said Yerran Naidu.

Significantly, he said his party was no longer part of the NDA. "Although there has been adequate floor co-ordination with the BJP over the tainted ministers isue, we are no longer part of the alliance and the decision to withdraw our members from various committees would be taken by our leader Chandrababu Naidu once the Assembly session in Andhra is over," said Naidu.

The TDP has only recently started having problems with the BJP. In the immediate aftermath of the rout faced by the party in Andhra Pradesh, the party in its convention had said that the Gujarat riots had hurt its prospects in the state.

The BJP in turn felt that ignoring the farmers suicides had cost them heavily. Furthermore, statements by various BJP leaders saying that "non-performing" allies be dropped alo created cracks in the relationship.

"There were many reasons for the loss in the elections, but the immdeiate blame game did a lot of harm to the realtionship," said a senior BJP leader. A far cry when the NDA selected G M C Balayogi of the TDP as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

In fact BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu, one of the main people behind not dropping the TDP from the NDA in pre poll adjustments, was also unaware whether the TDP had followed the NDA diktat or not.

"Please ask the TDP whether they have withdrawn their names or not," was his terse reply to a question on the issue. Yerran Naidu said that the matter would be decided soon.

"We might subscribe to the NDA view too, except that it will be upto Dr Chandrababu Naidu to decide," he said.