Upset over Budget, TDP declares 'war' on ally BJP

The Telugu Desam Party has declared "war" on its alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party over what it called a "raw deal" meted out to Andhra Pradesh in the Union Budget.

"We are going to declare war (on the BJP). We now have three options. One is to try and continue. The second is that our MPs resign and the third is breaking off this alliance. We will decide (our course of action) in a meeting with CM Naidu on Sunday," TG Venkatesh, TDP MP, said outside Parliament on Friday.

On Thursday, after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the budget, the TDP summoned an emergency meeting of the party MPs on February 4 to discuss the next course of action.

TDP supremo and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu reviewed the budget with some senior ministers and also held a tele-conference with party MPs, a senior party leader said.

All the party leaders expressed "serious displeasure" over the Union Budget as it "gave nothing" to the state.

TDP MPs, who earlier met at the residence of Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary in New Delhi, flayed the Centre for handing out a raw deal to the southern state in the Budget.

Naidu also spoke with them through the teleconference.

A couple of MPs reportedly suggested that they would quit their posts in protest but the party supremo reportedly told them everything would be discussed at the TDP Parliamentary Party meeting on Sunday, according to the leader.

A few senior state ministers, who were closeted with the chief minister after the Budget presentation, noted that the Centre only "meted out injustice" by not honouring any of the promises made over the past four years.

"Jaitley seems to have completely forgotten AP while presenting the Budget though we have given him a detailed report on the funds due from the Centre to the state," Agriculture Minister Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy said after the meeting with the chief minister.

"We are very much pained that the Centre turned a blind eye whereas AP should have been looked at specially. We will let the Centre realise our displeasure. We will have no objection if it responds favourably. But if it continues to behave the same way it has been doing over the (past four) years...it is not justified," Somireddy noted.

With inputs from PTI