Miffed Naidu to skip PM Modi''s meeting

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 1

While majority of non-NDA chief ministers are expected to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Wednesday meeting of a national committee on Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary celebrations, it seems Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu and his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao have decided to give it a miss.

Top TDP sources say Naidu has decided "boycott" the meeting chaired by PM Modi as he does not want to come face to face with someone who "betrayed his state" by going back on promises, including on according Special Category status to it.

As far as KCR is concerned, sources close to his party - the TRS - say Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav is dropping by on him in Hyderabad, apparently to discuss issues related to formation of the proposed anti-BJP, anti-Congress front. 

"His programme (meeting with Yadav) was decided much in advance," say TRS sources.

Meanwhile, other non-NDA CMs, including West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee and her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik, will be there at the meeting of the national committee set up to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary.

Notably, the BJP and the Trinamool Congress are also engaged in a bitter political battle in West Bengal.

However, TDP sources say Andhra Pradesh issues are "very different". Naidu attending the meeting would send a "wrong message in the state, where people are very angry about the treatment meted to the state by the BJP-led Centre," they say.

To be presided over by President Ram Nath Kovind, the committee has on board 114 members, including former PMs Atal Bihari Vajpayee, HD Deve Gowda and Manmohan Singh.

Its mandate is to approve policies, programmes and activities for the celebrations and supervise their implementation.

Constituted last year, the committee has chief ministers of all states, representatives from across the political parties, including Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav, intellectuals, Gandhians, and eminent persons from all walks of life.

Celebrations will be held across the country and abroad for a year from October 2, 2019 to October 2, 2020, to propagate Mahatma Gandhi's messages across the country.