YSR Congress president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday lambasted Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, saying that his government was dedicated to the chanting of AICC president Sonia Gandhi's name and was utterly neglecting the welfare of the farmers. Addressing a public gathering at Jyothi Theatre Centre here as part of the byelection campaign, Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy said that the farmers were in utter distress.
“The position of the agriculture sector in the state is that the farmers find it easy to commit suicide rather than carrying out cultivation,” the Kadapa MP said. Earlier, he launched a scathing attack on erstwhile Praja Rajyam president K. Chiranjeevi, who vacated the Tirupati seat to go to Rajya Sabha, “for ditching people for political promotion.” Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy said, “Had he (Mr Chiranjeevi) resigned for the welfare of the poor, students and farmers, I would have saluted him. But he mortgaged the hopes and aspirations of the people of Tirupati and surrendered to New Delhi for political promotion.”
The YSR Congress chief appealed to the peopl to vote for the YSR Congress and herald a change in the politically instable state that was “being remote-controlled from New Delhi.” The Kadapa MP termed the current byelections as a fight between righteousness and evil in politics. He became emotional while reacting to TD chief N. Chandrababu Naidu’s recent comment against him.
“He (Mr Naidu) questioned about my religion and caste. Humanism is my religion and my caste is to think about the welfare of the poor and downtrodden,” he said. Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy said that it was Mr Naidu who engineered the irregularities in the Emaar deals by selling lands at lower than market rates.
He defended the gesture of his father, former Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, of allocating lands to some pharmaceutical firms, “as they were aimed at generating employment for the locals (of Mahbubngar district).” Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy also alleged bias in the CBI probes against him vis-a-vis his political rivals.
He announced the name of former TTD chief Bhumana Karunakar Reddy as the YSR Congress candidate for the Tirupati bypolls.