As expected, Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has started moving his pawns to deny the Rajya Sabha seat to the YSR Congress party.
Three MPs -- Chiranjeevi, Renuka Chowdary, and CM Ramesh, will vacate the seats on April 2 on the expiration of their tenure.
Since the Congress does not have any MLAs, the TDP will win two seats while the YSRC can win the remaining one.
But, Naidu is planning to lure more MLAs from YSRC into the TDP to deny the opposition any chance ot win the RS seat.
TDP sources said Ramesh is seeking re-nomination as the MP. Naidu has no objection per se, but is learnt to have asked him to contest as an independent and bid for the seat by luring the YSRC MLAs to cross-vote for him.
The TDP can easily win two seats with 88 MLAs. But for the third seat, it is short of only one MLA, with the support of 43 legislators. So, if Ramesh can manage to attract one YSRC MLA, he can win the third seat.
The YSR Congress has officially declared industrialist Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy as its candidate. The party is confident that the remaining 44 MLAs will not switch sides. But it is apprehensive that if Ramesh can lure even one MLA, it will be a setback for YSRC.
It is learnt Ramesh is getting ready to offer huge sums of money to the YSR Congress legislators who indulge in cross voting in the biennial elections.
So, it will be interesting to see, whether TDP announces two or three candidates!
