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BJP, TDP sign seat-sharing deal

Shireen in Hyderabad

After four days of tough bargaining and protracted negotiations, the Telugu Desam Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party have reached an agreement on the seats to be contested in the simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assembly in Andhra Pradesh.

The talks, which saw several deadlocks after commencing on Thursday, were resumed on Sunday morning.

After the teams of the two parties identified the constituencies to be allotted to the BJP, Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu held wrap-up discussions till the wee hours of Monday and finalised the list.

The meeting between the two sides, led by Chandrababu Naidu and Union Minister of State for Urban Affairs and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya, continued for four hours and ended at around 0300 hours on Monday.

After the meeting, BJP state president Ch Vidyasagar Rao told waiting newsmen that the talks concluded on a happy note. "The matter has been settled amicably. We negotiated and agreed on the seats to be contested by our party. We also signed on the agreed list, which will be circulated to the media by Monday afternoon," he added.

Vidyasagar Rao said that the BJP would contest eight Lok Sabha and 25 assembly seats as per the broad understanding hammered out by the party's central unit on August 11. "As the state president of the BJP, I tell you that everything went on well," he said and denied that there were any contentious seats over which the two sides had heartburns.

Refusing to give out the names of the constituencies which figured in the discussions between the two sides, he maintained that there was no specific dispute over Rajahmundry or Kakinada.

He said that whether the TDP would join the National Democratic Alliance or not would be decided later.

In the final discussions, the TDP was represented by the chief minister, Telugu Desam parliamentary party leader K Yerran Naidu and Revenue Minister and politburo member T Devender Goud.

The BJP team comprised Bandaru Dattatreya and Vidyasagar Rao.

The BJP and the TDP announced a seat-sharing accord on August 11, following the intervention of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

But in the last four days, there had been several deadlocks with both the sides making claims and counter-claims over particular seats.

The TDP insisted that the BJP should 'concede' the Kakinada seat, so that the party can accommodate prominent Kapu leader Mudragada Padmanabham who recently quit the BJP and rejoined the TDP.

However, the BJP was adamant not to leave any of the four seats held by it in the dissolved Lok Sabha, more particularly the Kakinada seat which was won by Telugu film star U V Krishnam Raju in the 1998 elections.

Lot of claims and counter-claims were also made with regard to the assembly seats. The tentative lists of seats drawn up by the two parties for seat-sharing underwent frequent changes, till the issue was finally settled.

Sources said that the Kakinada LS seat has been left to the TDP. So also the Nalgonda seat.

Five ministers and Chandrababu Naidu's brother Nara Ramamurthy Naidu figured in the second list of 31candidates for the assembly elections released by the TDP.

Chandrababu Naidu released the list after a marathon politburo meeting, where it was finalised.

Four legislators were denied re-nomination while 19 others were accommodated. Incidentally, no woman candidate figured in the list.

Later, the nominees were administered an oath by Naidu at the party office.

Additional reportage: UNI

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