Naidu’s gambit likely to spur Third Front efforts

Hyderabad:The mounting pressure from within his Telugu Desam Party and growing belligerence of the opposition over the demand for Special Category status to Andhra Pradesh has prompted Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to finally call it quits and pull out his representatives from the Union Cabinet.
The next logical step before the TDP, the biggest southern ally of the BJP, is to exit from the NDA.
Naidu’s latest gambit is expected to herald re-alignment of political forces ahead of the 2019 elections and hasten the process of forging the Third Front as an alternative to Congress and BJP. The TDP has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and six in the Rajya Sabha.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s categorical statement on Wednesday evening, ruling out Special Category status, has come as the last straw for the TDP which has been nursing a strained relationship with the BJP over the “inadequate” release of central funds to the successor state grappling with post-bifurcation blues.
The crux of the TDP’s contention is that the successor Andhra Pradesh had lost out heavily due to “clumsy and unscientific” division of the state nearly four years ago and that the NDA government had done precious little to undo the damage.
The central funds for building the new state capital Amaravati, completion of Polavaram irrigation project, bridging the revenue deficit and creation of a separate railway zone for Visakhapatnam are some of the key demands of the TDP. It has been insisting on implementation of all promises made in the AP Bifurcation Act of 2014 and assurances given on the floor of Parliament by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
On its part, the BJP leaders have been arguing that granting Special Category status to any state prospectively is untenable in the light of the 14th Finance Commission report. However, the Centre has offered to fulfil the monetary equivalent of the special status and honour every commitment made in the bifurcation act.
Offering to fund all of AP’s programmes to the tune of 90% which is equivalent to the aid that the special category states get through other means like external agencies, Jaitley assured that the Centre was even willing to accept the state government’s suggestion of routing such funds through the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). Last month, the Centre had suggested creation of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) with the funds from NABARD flowing into it.
Interestingly, Naidu and his party leaders had agreed last year to accept the special package in lieu of the Special Category status and took pains to explain how it would benefit the state in the long run. However, the public mood on the ground appears to have changed in the last few months.