No-Confidence Motion: TDP lawmaker JC Diwakar Reddy is known for his imprudent statements. (File)
Highlights
- JC Diwakar Reddy says he is "fed up" with the centre and the TDP
- He denied he was upset with TDP for not giving him enough prominence
- PM Modi government to face no-trust motion in Lok Sabha tomorrow
As the Telugu Desam Party (TDP)'s no-confidence motion is taken up on Friday, one of its own lawmakers has threatened to bunk parliament. JC Diwakar Reddy says he is "fed up" with the centre and his party's government in Andhra Pradesh.
"I'm not going to attend the parliament session, you can say that I violated the party whip. I'm fed up with the centre and our TDP govt. I'm fed up with the whole political system," Mr Reddy told the ANI news agency, adding, "Right now I am in my native place in Anantapur and will come in front of the media with my logic within a week."
"This is just a routine. The government is not going to fall anyway. And I cannot speak English or Hindi. So my presence or absence doesn't matter," he was quoted by news agency PTI as saying. "There are others who are well-versed in English and can speak well," he said.
Sources told NDTV that he is upset that he was not consulted and taken into confidence by TDP leader YS Chowdary while moving the notice for the no-confidence motion.
This is the first no-confidence motion Prime Minister Narendra Modi's four-year-old government will face and the first to be taken up in 15 years, since the last BJP-led government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee faced one in 2003. The government has enough numbers to sail through the motion, which is mostly a political message in a year of elections.
The Narendra Modi government will face a no-confidence motion in Lok Sabha on Friday.
At the start of the monsoon session of parliament yesterday, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said TDP's Kesineni Srinavas was the first to submit notice for a no-trust motion. She asked him to read it out, and the motion was supported by over 50 members from opposition parties.
On Sunday TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu wrote letters to non-BJP, non-Congress parties seeking support for his party's motion against the Centre over demand for special category status to Andhra Pradesh.
Mr Reddy is known for his imprudent statements.
A six-time Congress legislator, he switched to Chandrababu Naidu's party before the 2014 general election.
Recently, he said that when he was in the Congress, he had advised Sonia Gandhi to get her son Rahul Gandhi "married to a Brahmin girl" to make it easier for him to become prime minister with the support of Brahmins in Uttar Pradesh.
"But Sonia Gandhi didn't listen to me," he said.
Last year, Mr Reddy drew criticism for his high-handedness at the Visakhapatnam airport. He was on camera shoving airline staff and was even banned from flying briefly by some airlines.
(With inputs from ANI and PTI)