Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MPs on Thursday, the very first day of Budget Session, staged a protest outside Parliament pressing their demand for special status to Andhra Pradesh. Members of TDPs were seen holding yellow placards and flags and displaying their various demands which include financial status to the state among others.
A TDP MP said, ‘In 2014 when our state was bifurcated, we had put forward 20 demands. But the Bhartiya Janta Party government has miserably failed to fulfil our demands. The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) himself had given us assurance’
Earlier on Tuesday, TDP Chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said February 1, the day the central government will present the budget in Parliament, will be a “black day” for the state and called for protests.
“February 1 is a Black Day for the state. The BJP-led government at the Centre has discriminated against the state at every step. Unless the BJP is trounced at the Hustings, Justice will not be done to Andhra Pradesh (AP), Andhra Pradesh Naidu said. TDP Chief also asked his party workers to observe peaceful protests by sporting black badges and showing black flags when the Centre presents the budget for 2019-20.
However, this is not the first time, the party has made several protests outside and within the house demanding special status to the State. However, Centre has clearly ruled out the possibilities of granting Special Status to Andhra Pradesh.
During the Winter Session, on December 18, Central Government while replying to Telugu Desam Party (TDP) member Kanakamedala Ravindrakumar in the Rajya Sabha reasserted that it had already allotted special package to the state. In a written reply to TDP member Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar, the Centre asserted that it was not possible to grant special status in Andhra Pradesh as it had already allotted special package, as a substitute to special status, to the state.
At present only 11 states – Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tripura, Uttarakhand and Mizoram–have been granted financial aid under this category as a majority of these regions have hilly-terrain and have a considerable tribal population.
The demand to grant special Status to Andhra Pradesh surfaced after the bifurcation of the state into Two Parts that carved out Telangana, the youngest state of the nation in 2014. Andhra Pradesh’s capital, Hyderabad, was also shifted to Telangana after bifurcation in 2014.