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George Iype in Hyderabad
Following the untimely death of Lok Sabha speaker G M C Balayogi, the Bharatiya Janata Party has offered the top post in the Lok Sabha to the Telugu Desam Party for a second time.
Office-bearers of TDP said that though officially a decision on the next speaker would be taken only after Balayogi's funeral on Wednesday, the BJP leadership has already assured Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu that the post will remain with the TDP.
Senior TDP leaders said names of two party leaders have come up as possible candidates for the speaker's post. They are K Yerrannaidu, former Union rural development minister and currently the leader of TDP MPs in Parliament and Dr M Jagannath, a senior party MP.
Yerrannaidu, 45, who first got elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996, was made a Union minister under the H D Deve Gowda government.
Yerrannaidu is considered a close aide of Chief Minister Naidu and he is TDP's chief political negotiator in Delhi.
In fact, in 1998, it was Yerrannaidu who stood as a stand-by when Balayogi's arrival to Delhi to submit his nomination for the speaker's election was delayed.
But some TDP leaders admit that it is Dr Jagannath, 51, who has a better chance to get his party's nomination. He, like Balayogi, is a Dalit. A doctor by profession, Jagannath won the last Lok Sabha election from the Nagarkurnool reserved constituency in Andhra Pradesh.
He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996 and served as the Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party leader that year.
Yerrannaidu told rediff.com that this was not the time to discuss who would be the next speaker. "We are shocked and pained by the untimely departure of our dear colleague Balayogi. We do not want to discuss about the next speaker right now."
However, Yerrannaidu said that there was no reason why the next speaker should not be from the TDP. "The speaker's post is naturally ours," he added.
With 29 MPs in the Lok Sabha, TDP is the second largest coalition partner in the Vajpayee government after the BJP.
In the wake of the communal riots in Gujarat and the sudden escalation of tensions in Ayodhya, the Vajpayee government has become extremely vulnerable to pressure from its coalition partners.
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