The prestigious chairman post of Public Accounts Committee of the Andhra Pradesh state assembly is all set to go to Jana Sena Party, the major alliance partners of Telugu Desam Party led by chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
Jana Sena Party chief and deputy chief minister Pawan Kalyan has recommended the name of senior MLA from Bhimavaram Pulaparthi Ramanjaneyulu as the candidate for the post the PAC chairman.
Ramanjaneyulu, a three-time MLA from Bhimavaram, on Thursday filed his nomination papers for the PAC chairman post, along with eight other MLAs representing the ruling NDA.
The NDA MLAs who filed the nominations are: Sriram Rajagopal (Jaggayyapet), B V Jayanageshwar Reddy (Yemmiganur), Arimilli Radhakrishna (Tanuku), Ashok Reddy (Giddalur), Burla Ramanjaneyulu (Prathipadu), Nakka Anand Babu (Vemuru) and Kolla Lalitha Kumari (S Kota) from Telugu Desam Party and P Vishnu Kumar Raju (Visakhapatnam) from BJP.
Though as per the tradition, the PAC chairman post should have been given to the opposition YSR Congress party. But since it doesn’t have the leader of opposition status with only 11 MLAs, the NDA government was reluctant to give the same to the YSRCP.
As a result, senior YSRCP MLA and former minister Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy from Punganur also entered the fray and filed his nomination post, making the contest inevitable.
Now that there is a contest, there will be formal election for the PAC on Friday and each member should get a minimum of 20 votes.
However, the YSRCP has only 11 MLAs in the 175-member Andhra assembly and hence, there is no chance for Peddireddy to win the election.
In the previous assembly, the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) managed to elect just one member, Payyavula Keshav, who was subsequently appointed as the PAC chairman.
