New Delhi: Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Wednesday formally accepted the resignations of five YSR Congress MPs from the House after they met her and ruled out any rethink of their decision. It was not officially clear, however, whether the resignations were accepted from April 6, the day they quit or from a later date.
In case the Speaker’s office notified the resignations from a day later than May 26, then the Election Commission does not need to call for byelections as there is less than a year left for the general election in 2019 and the polls to these seats can be held then.
Sources said that when the YSR Congress (YSRCP) MPs met Ms Mahajan, she asked them to given in writing that they are sticking to their stand of resigning from the Lok Sabha, which they eventually did.
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), YSRCP’s main rival in Andhra Pradesh, alleged that it was a deliberate ploy on the part of the Speaker to save BJP the blushes as its numbers had come down to 269 with the recent bypoll losses and with the exit of these 5 YSRCP MPs, the difference with the majority mark would go up further.
Earlier, just after the 2014 polls, four YSRCP members had defected.
It might be recalled that the five Lok Sabha MPs — Y.V. Subbareddy, Mekapati Rajamohan Reddy, Y.S. Avinash Reddy, V. Varaprasad Rao and P.V. Mithun Reddy — had resigned to protest the Centre’s decision to not grant special category status to the state, the same issue on which the Telugu Desam Party had quit the NDA.
Andhra Pradesh is scheduled to go in for Assembly polls along with the Lok Sabha elections next year.
Shortly after the Speaker accepted the resignations, TDP MP Kesineni Srinivas alleged that it was a “fixed match” between the YSRPCP and the BJP.
“The acceptance of the resignation of the five MPs of the YSR Congres is nothing but a drama. The question one needs to ask is why did they not resign earlier and why did it take so long for the Speaker to accept their resignation,” Mr Srinivas told the media here.
