Accuses leaders of denying his due, trying to split his father’s family
After a long standoff with the Congess party leadership, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, son of the late Andhra Pradesh chief minister, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, today resigned from membership of the party and the Lok Sabha.
In a hard-hitting resignation letter to party president Sonia Gandhi, he accused the party high command of trying to split the family of YSR, who died in a helicopter crash last year, soon after he’d led the party to a rare re-election victory.
His mother, Vijayalaxmi, also quit the party, as well as her state assembly seat. She’d been given the ticket for the assembly from her late husband’s seat.
Jagan, as the son is known, is likely to float his own party. He had represented Kadapa in southern Andhra in the Lok Sabha.
However, he said he “will never stoop down that low” to unseat the current Congress government in the state. He appealed to his followers among the party’s MLAs not to “resign for my sake”.
“The wish (of the party high command) was to isolate and send me out. I am leaving alone,” he said.
“The last straw was the conspiracy that is being hatched to vertically split the family of the great leader who brought back the Congress party to power in Andhra Pradesh twice. I was shocked at the murky and disgusting politics being played at my back,” Reddy stated in his five-page letter.
The letter, a copy of which was released to the media, says Y S Vivekananda Reddy, brother of YSR, went to Delhi at the insistence of Union minister Gulam Nabi Azad. “Media reports revealed that this conspiracy was hatched to rein in Jaganmohan Reddy by provoking his family members against him. Does it not tantamount to a conspiracy against my family and myself?” he questioned.
Vivekananda Reddy, the uncle of Jagan, was in Delhi for the past two days, apparently lobbying for a berth in the Cabinet of the new chief minister, N Kiran Kumar Reddy. He met Gandhi yesterday.
An aspirant for the chief minister’s post, Jagan said it slowly dawned on him that “deliberate attempts were being made to throw me out of the party and malign the towering leader, late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy”.
“Why all this? What is the sin I have committed? Why this animosity against my family and myself? Why efforts are being made to blur my later father’s image? Did I commit anything wrong? What is it?” he asked the Congress president in his letter.
He told Gandhi he’d acted in accordance with her direction after his father had died, though 150 MLAs supported his candidature for the chief minister’s post after his father’s death. “Is it a mistake?” he asked, wondering whether it was also a mistake that he had cooperated for the smooth conduct of the Congress Legislature Party convened a few days ago to replace K Rosaiah with Kiran Kumar Reddy as the chief minister.
“My father had dedicated his life for the party. But my family is in a situation created by these forces (Congress bigwigs) with the blessings of the party high command and we have no option but to leave the party,” Jagan stated.
Jagan’s resignation came ahead of the Cabinet formation by the new chief minister, slated for December 1. It is also seen as a pre-emptive move as there were enough hints in the media that the party leadership was preparing to taking disciplinary action against him and deny ministerial berths to his followers.
The Congress leadership also seemed to have prepared for the exit of Reddy and his staunch supporters. It held parleys with Praja Rajyam Party founded by actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi, to counter the possible adverse impact of Reddy’s exit keeping in view that it has a slender majority in the Assembly.
The Congress has 156 legislators in the 294-member Assembly. Hence, it has offered ministerial berths to PRP, which has 16 legislators.
