The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday issued a whip to it members of Parliament to vote in favour of the no-confidence motion against the Narendra Modi government to be taken up in the Lok Sabha on Friday.
A senior AAP leader said the party’s chief whip, Bhagwant Mann, issued the directive that will be binding on its four members in the Lok Sabha. The party’s suspended MP from Patiala Dharamvir Gandhi is among them.
The motion has been slated for debate at 11am on Friday – the first since the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government came to power four years ago.
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) moved the motion on Wednesday, the first day of the Monsoon session and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Thursday allowed the motion.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister and TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu had sought the support of other parties for the motion, citing NDA government’s “non-fulfilment of the promise” to grant special status to his state.
The ruling party is sure that the no-confidence motion moved against it will fail and parties outside the broader NDA will support the government as it faces the first floor test in Parliament in 15 years.
Opposition leaders have said that even if the no-confidence motion is based on the unfulfilled promise of special package for Andhra Pradesh after the creation of Telangana, a wider range of issues will come up during the debate.
They said atrocities against people belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the government’s inability to generate job jobs, communal tension, and the Kashmir situation, will also be discussed.
Prasanta Patnaik 
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