A severe discontent is brewing in the Bharatiya Janata Party in Andhra Pradesh over the allotment of seats by the Telugu Desam Party and selection of candidates at the behest of state BJP president Daggubati Purandeshwari.
It was evident from the way quite a few BJP leaders abstained from the meeting organised by the party state unit on Tuesday.
The meeting was attended by BJP central leaders Siddharth Nath Singh and Arun Singh participated in this meeting in the presence of candidates who were given tickets for the Lok Sabha elections.
Among those who abstained from the meeting include former BJP State president Somu Veerraju, Rajya Sabha member GVL Narasimha Rao and senior leaders Vishnu Vardhan Reddy and Y Satyakumar.
While Satya Kumar tweeted on Wednesday morning that he had informed the party leadership about his absence well in advance, others did not even give any explanation.
Obviously, they were miffed with the party for selecting defectors from other parties, ignoring seniors who had been with the party for a long time.
Out of the six candidates for MP seats, only Bhupati Srinivas Varma, who would be contesting from Narsapuram, is the genuine BJP leader.
All the other five MP candidates like D Purandeswari, C M Ramesh, N Kiran Kumar Reddy, Kothapalli Geetha and Dr Vara Prasad are defectors from other parties.
The party high command wants Satyakumar to contest from Dharmavaram assembly seat and Somu Veerraju from Anaparthi but the leaders are reluctant to contest from those seats.
The BJP has apparently proposed to its alliance partner, the TDP, to offer Rajahmundry Rural assembly seat to field Somu Veerraju.