TDP, second largest party in NDA, likely to join govt at Centre

Amaravati: The Telugu Desam Party, which has emerged as ‘king maker’ in the NDA government’s formation at the Centre, is likely to join the union cabinet, and June 12 has been chosen as the tentative date on which TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu will be swearing in as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.

TDP spokesperson Jyotshna Tirunagari said the TDP is the second largest and most crucial party in the NDA. “Chandrababu Naidu’s swearing-in ceremony is tentatively scheduled for June 12.

We are a part of the NDA and will obviously be joining the Central government,” she told PTI. The TDP leader further said this is not the first time that the party has been in government with the NDA at the centre. “If you remember, during Vajpayeeji’s government, we were also there.

In 2014, we were there, and now, in 2024, we are here,” she added. Late TDP leader GMC Balayogi was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister. However, he died in a chopper crash in Andhra Pradesh in 2002.

Former TDP MP K Ravindra Nath said Naidu directed all party MPs to attend NDA’s Friday meeting in New Delhi and said that Naidu is also leaving for the national capital tonight. When asked about the TDP joining the government at the Centre, he said that so far, the TDP supremo has not given any indications.

The TDP alone won 16 MP seats in Andhra Pradesh, while the NDA alliance of the TDP, BJP and Janasena collectively won the lion’s share of 21 seats out of 25. Senior BJP leader and the party’s Rajya Sabha MP GVL Narasimha Rao told PTI that there are discussions among NDA partners, but no clarity has emerged so far. “No information has come out so far.

We will have to wait until it comes out officially. We know that discussions are going on. But we don’t have information on how many seats (cabinet berths) are being offered,” the BJP leader said.

During the NDA regime in 2014, in which the TDP was also a constituent, the Andhra Pradesh-based party was given one post as cabinet minister and another as minister of state. P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Y S Chowdary (now in BJP) were in the cabinet from June 2014 to 2018.