BJP-Led NDA Meeting Today, Chandrababu Naidu Asks All TDP MPs To Attend It
Days after the Lok Sabha election results, newly elected MPs of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance or NDA will likely meet in New Delhi on Friday, June 7, to elect Narendra Modi as their leader.
Telugu Desam Party supremo N Chandrababu Naidu reportedly directed all party MPs to attend NDA’s meeting in New Delhi.
The TDP alone won 16 MP seats in Andhra Pradesh, while the NDA alliance of TDP, BJP and Janasena collectively won the lion’s share of 21 seats out of 25.
After being elected as the NDA’s leader, Narendra Modi will take the oath of office for his third term as prime minister at a swearing-in ceremony likely to be held on Sunday, June 9.
Top updates on BJP-led NDA meeting in New Delhi
N Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP left for New Delhi on Thursday and is set to take part in the NDA meeting.
News agency PTI, citing TDP sources, reported that Chandrababu Naidu is expected to be in New Delhi until June 9 for Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony.
After Narendra Modi’s election as the leader of NDA MPs, senior members of the alliance such as Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United) will likely to join the prime minister for a meeting with President Droupadi Murmu to present her the list of parliamentarians supporting him.
Modi may be sworn in over the weekend, possibly Sunday, PTI reported. The NDA has 293 MPs, comfortably above the majority mark of 272 in the 543-member Lok Sabha.
TDP, which has emerged as ‘kingmaker’ in the NDA government formation at the Centre with with 16 MPs, is likely to join the Union cabinet, a party spokesperson told PTI on Thursday.
The TDP will also seek special status for revenue-starved Andhra Pradesh, which lost IT behemoth Hyderabad to Telangana during the state’s bifurcation in 2014.
This is not the first time that the TDP has been in government with the NDA at the centre. Late TDP leader GMC Balayogi was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister. However, he died in a chopper crash in Andhra Pradesh in 2002.
According to Shiv Sena sources, instead of his son and three-term MP Shrikant Shinde, Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde wants other senior MPs to be considered for ministerial roles.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who will meet his party’s 12 parliamentarians in Delhi on Friday morning, is likely to demand four ministerial berths and special status for the state where the NDA won 30 out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats on offer.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, senior JD(U) leader and Bihar minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said, “The JD(U) is part of the NDA and will remain with it. But, there are certain demands of the JD(U) related to the financial condition and economy of Bihar that must be fulfilled by the Centre. Our demand for special category status for Bihar is fully justified and needs to be fulfilled. We stick to our demand for SCS for Bihar.”
Preparing to take oath for a third straight term as the head of a coalition government, Modi on June 5 chaired a meeting of the ruling alliance’s members who unanimously elected him as its leader.