The YSR Congress Parliamentary Party will be voting against the NDA candidate in the upcoming Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Elections, V Vijaysai Reddy, the General Secretary of YSRCP, announced on Tuesday.
This comes almost two months after five MPs from the party resigned from their Parliamentary seats in protest of the Centre’s failure to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh.
The party had given the NDA government an ultimatum to grant Special Status to the state, failing which the members of YSRCP in Lok Sabha would resign.
“The Political Affairs Committee of YSR Congress Party advised our party president, Shri Jaganmohan Reddy gaaru. Considering the suggestions given by the Political Affairs Committee, [the party] has taken a decision not to vote for either the BJP or BJP’s allies’ candidate in view of the fact that the BJP has filed an affidavit in the court stating that the Special Category Status would not be granted to the state of Andhra Pradesh. Since the BJP has taken a final decision it seems, on this count, YSR Congress Party which has been fighting for the last four to four-and-a-half years for Special Category Status, we have decided to go vote against BJP ally’s candidate,” Vijaysai Reddy told media persons.
MPs YV Subba Reddy, Mekapati Rajamohan Reddy, YS Avinash Reddy, Varaprasada Rao and PV Mithun Reddy unanimously tendered their resignations in June, citing that the BJP had not honoured promises made to the state during the 2014 elections.
Their resignation letters, submitted to the Speaker on April 6, stated merely one line: “I hereby tender my resignation of my Lok Sabha seat in the House with immediate effect," and were accepted by the Speaker of the House, Sumitra Mahajan.
Now, the party has only two members in Parliament: Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy and Vijaysai Reddy, both of whom are in the Rajya Sabha.
Shortly after the announcement on Tuesday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar reached out to his Telangana counterpart, K Chandrasekhar Rao, to request them to support JD(U) candidate Harivansh Narayan Singh in the upcoming Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman elections.
Harivansh Narayan Singh is an ex-journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Hindi daily Prabhat Khabar, who is a first-time Rajya Sabha MP representing Bihar and seems to be the NDA’s primary choice of candidate for the upcoming election.
There was speculation in the past that YSRCP would join hands with the BJP in the state elections scheduled for 2019. However, the party has made it clear that it would not.