Narsapuram MP K. Raghu Rama Krishna Raju, who resigned from the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) recently, joined the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Friday.
The MP from Narsapuram, who was denied a ticket by the BJP to contest again from the same constituency, formally joined the TDP in the presence of party President N. Chandrababu Naidu at a public rally at Palakollu in West Godavari district.
On the occasion, he said that with the TDP chief’s initiative, he was once again among the people and would remain indebted to Chandrababu Naidu and the people. He predicted that on June 4, Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan would create a sensation.
Raju, who resigned from YSRCP in February this year, was aspiring for a BJP ticket as Narsapuram was one of the six Lok Sabha seats allotted to it under the seat-sharing agreement among the TDP, the Jana Sena, and the BJP.
However, he was denied a ticket by the BJP as he had not formally joined the party and it fielded Srinivasa Varma.
Welcoming Raju into the party, the TDP President said that he had fought for five years against "psycho" (Andhra CM Y.S.) Jagan Mohan Reddy to save democracy.
Naidu alleged that Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy had stopped Raju from entering his own constituency and the police had tortured him the whole night.
"â Dictator Jagan has suppressed the opposition and those who questioned his anarchies in these 5 years. Many people have been illegally arrested and faced worse situations, and some people have committed suicide," he said.
Raju, on February 24, resigned from the primary membership of the YSRCP, telling party President and Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy that his multiple efforts to get him disqualified from his parliamentary membership haven’t yielded the desired results.
The MP had said in January 2022 that if the YSRCP failed to get him disqualified, he would resign and contest a by-election.
Raju, who was elected to Lok Sabha from Narsapuram on a YSRCP ticket in 2019, raised the banner of revolt in 2020 by openly criticizing the party policies. It was in July 2020 that YSRCP submitted a disqualification petition against him to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. The party leaders had brought to the Speaker’s notice that Raju had been making statements against the party. They said his conduct was highly questionable and he lost the moral right to continue as a member of the House representing the party. He was also accused of hobnobbing with the leaders of the opposition party and using unparliamentary language against Jagan Mohan Reddy and other party members.