The Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party meeting held at Vijayawada under the leadership of party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu to discuss the contentious special category status issue was nothing short of a high voltage drama.
Going by the information leaked out from the meeting, Naidu did not like the idea of quitting the NDA and blackmail Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He wanted the MPs to maintain restraint and not to issue public statements attacking the NDA or the BJP. He particularly pulled up Anantapur MP J C Diwakar Reddy for declaring that the TDP-BJP honeymoon is over.
However, the picture given to the media outside was different. The media was given the impression that Naidu wanted to go all out against the Centre and asked the MPs to mount pressure on the Modi government.
While two Central ministers -- Civil Aviation Minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary sought to know whether they should quit their posts for which Naidu said no, the news that came out of the meeting that both the ministers threatened to quit the Modi Cabinet.
The correct information, however, is that Naidu told them that he would make one more attempt to meet Modi with a representation on various issues including special category status. He told them that further course of action would be decided depending on the response of Modi.
