Telugu Desam Party leaders in Andhra Pradesh, who have been crying foul over the alleged ill-treatment being meted out to party president and leader of opposition N Chandrababu Naidu, have got yet another reason to substantiate their charges.
The Andhra Pradesh government headed by YSR Congress party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy allocated a relatively smaller chamber to Naidu in the state assembly.
During the regime of Naidu as the chief minister, this chamber was allotted to then deputy speaker Mandali Buddha Prasad.
Interestingly, the chamber which was allotted to Jagan Mohan Reddy when he was the leader of the opposition, which is relatively bigger, has now been allotted to present deputy speaker Kona Raghupathi.
The TDP leaders are arguing that the allocation of small chambers to Naidu was nothing but a deliberate attempt to insult him. They wondered why Naidu was not allotted the same chamber which was occupied by Jagan when the latter was the leader of the opposition.
However, the YSRC has its own reasoning. When Jagan was the opposition leader, his party had a strength of 67 MLAs and hence, Jagan needed a bigger chamber so as to meet such a large number of MLAs.
“This time, the TDP has only 23 MLAs. So, even if all of them want to meet Naidu at a time, they don’t require a huge chamber for the party president,” a YSRC leader said.
They reminded that during the 2009 elections, the chamber allocated to Praja Rajyam Party chief Chiranjeevi in the assembly was also very small, though his party had 18 MLAs.