In a surprising and shocking development, Andhra Pradesh Speaker Tammineni Sitaram on Tuesday accepted the resignation of former minister and Telugu Desam Party MLA from Visakhapatnam (north) Ganta Srinivasa Rao, nearly three years after he put in his papers.
A notification to this effect was issued by the Speaker’s office on Tuesday evening. The decision comes as a big surprise, as the state assembly elections are scheduled to be held in another three months.
According to sources, the Speaker has taken the decision apparently to deny an opportunity to Ganta to vote in the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, scheduled to be held in March.
The elections for three Rajya Sabha seats will be held to fill up the vacancies arising out of the completion of the term of Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy (YSRCP), Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar (TDP) and C M Ramesh (BJP).
The YSR Congress party, which has 151 MLAs in the state assembly, can win all the three seats comfortably and according to sources, Jagan has finalised the candidatures of Meda Raghu, Golla Babu Rao and Y V Subba Reddy for the posts.
However, with Jagan dropping several sitting MLAs from the list of contestants for the coming assembly elections and some of them joining the Telugu Desam Party, Jana Sena Party and the Congress, the ruling party might not get enough numbers to elect three RS seats.
So, the TDP might field its own candidate and the rebel YSRCP MLAs might vote for him. In order to avoid that, the only way is to see that the Speaker accepts the resignations of those who had quit their assembly membership as well.
The acceptance of Ganta’s resignation now is said to be part of this strategy. He had resigned way back on February 11, 2021, in protest against the Centre’s decision to privatise Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP).
He tendered the resignation in the ‘Speaker format’ in view of the criticism being made by some political leaders on his resignation, which he had done five days before.
"It was said that my resignation was not in a proper format when I resigned for the steel plant on February 6. Just now I submitted my resignation in the correct format," said Ganta.
It is expected that the Speaker would also accept the resignation of Mangalagiri MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy and Rayadurgam MLA Kapu Ramachandra Reddy, who resigned from their assembly membership in the Speaker’s format.
