Naresh Gujral, RIGHT: Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate for Amritsar’s parliamentary seat Arun Jaitley shakes hand with his Congress Party rival and former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh during their campaign with morning walkers at a garden in Amritsar yesterday. In recent the two leaders have directed barbs at each other. Both have accused each other of lowering the level of political discourse between them.

IANS/Hyderabad


The Telugu Desam Party yesterday returned to the opposition National Democratic Alliance after a gap of a decade, joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition for the assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh.
TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu announced the poll pact in the presence of BJP and NDA leaders.
The TDP, which had fought the 1999 election in alliance with the BJP and played a key role in propping up the NDA government, pulled out of the coalition after the 2004 elections, when it lost power in Andhra Pradesh and the NDA was routed in the general election.
Naidu told reporters that the TDP entered into an alliance with the BJP to serve the national interest.
The former Andhra Pradesh chief minister said the TDP and BJP were capable of freeing the country from corruption. He was confident that the NDA would get more than 300 Lok Sabha seats.
On the protest by a section of TDP leaders over allocating some seats to the BJP, Naidu said losses and gains were common in an alliance. He said the party would try to do justice in future to the leaders who were feeling aggrieved.
“Chandrababu Naidu will be the co-architect with Narendra Modi in creating a corruption- and Congress-free India,” said Naresh Gujral of the Akali Dal, a constituent of the NDA.
BJP treasurer Piyush Goyal said the TDP’s return would strengthen the NDA.
BJP’s national spokesman Prakash Javadekar said the two parties would work together in both Telangana and Seemandhra regions.
Telangana and the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh comprising Seemandhra will come into being as separate states on June 2. Naidu, who was the chief minister of united Andhra Pradesh, is now eyeing the post in the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh. Poll surveys forecast that the TDP will also win majority of Lok Sabha seats in Seemandhra.
The TDP and BJP leaders formalised the deal under which the BJP will contest 47 assembly and seven Lok Sabha seats in Telangana and 15 assembly and five Lok Sabha seats in Seemandhra.
The TDP, as the major regional party, will contest 72 assembly and 10 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana and 160 assembly and 20 Lok Sabha seats in Seemandhra.
Elections to 119 assembly and 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana will be held on April 30 while 175 assembly and 25 Lok Sabha constituencies in Seemandhra will go to the polls on May 7.
In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had won seven seats while the TDP got 29.
The breakthrough in alliance talks came on Saturday night after the intervention of the top leaders of the BJP and the TDP. At one stage, the talks appeared to have collapsed.
Gujral, Javadekkar and Goyal held talks with TDP leaders at a hotel.
The TDP leaders who held the talks were Sujana Chowdhary, E Dayakar Rao, Y Ramakrishnudu and M Narasimhulu. Javadekar met Chandrababu Naidu twice on Saturday.
In other developments, a Lok Sabha candidate from Nashik in Maharashtra left officials speechless when he paid his security deposit of Rs12,500 in one, two, five and 10 rupee coins.
Pramod Natekar, who heads the small Bahujan Swarajya Mahasangh party, deposited the money, weighing a few kilograms, in plastic bags on Saturday.
There were 2,500 coins of Re 1 (Rs2,500); 2,500 coins of Rs2 (Rs5,000); 908 coins of Rs5 (Rs4,540) and 46 coins of Rs10 (Rs460) - totalling Rs12,500.
Candidates have to pay the security deposit while filing nominations.
It took the Election Commission officials three hours to count the money.
“There is no rule that small change can’t be given as security deposit,” an aide to Natekar said.
The deposit is forfeited if the candidate does not get a minimum number of votes.
Natekar is a street vendor, and the security was collected from other vendors and pavement dwellers, his aide said.