Naidu takes potshots at Congress govt

The assessment of former chief minister and leader of the opposition N Chandrababu Naidu on the 100-day rule by the Congress government led by chief minister Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR), is that the regime is "evil and inefficient".

While as chief minister, Naidu used to allege that the opposition was merely politicising each and every issue whenever the latter questioned his government's actions during the last nine years.

Out of power though he promised to play the constructive role of opposition leader, however he seems to have chosen the beaten track by finding fault with every action of the YSR government.

Giving his assessment of the 100-day rule of Congress government in the state at a media conference here on Saturday, Naidu did not even spare the photograph that appeared in all the news papers in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was greeting the grandson of Sonia Gandhi with folded hands.

He alleged that the institution of prime minister was being degraded at the Centre and the same was the case in the state as well.

Naidu chose to personally target YSR by squarely blaming the three-month-old government for the unabated suicides of farmers and weavers. He accused the chief minister of sycophancy and mentioned about his frequent Delhi trips to protect his chair, appointing his own people in government posts, and using 'Rajiv Palle Bata' programme for his own publicity.

He objected to the construction of a building for the chief minister's residence, terming it as 'Indra Bhavanam'.

"I used to happily operate from my own little house. Why does he need a palatial bungalow? Moreover, the future chief ministers may not chose to live in that building," he said.

When a reporter attracted Naidu's attention to the plight of government secretaries and visitors at his residence till recently, he quipped that the officials had the secretariat to work.

"Lawlessness, chaos in government, propping up the corrupt, price rise, ignoring the weaker sections of society, failure to provide credit and other inputs to farmers, failure to contain the spread of communicable diseases" were among the other accusations that figured in Naidu's assessment of the Congress rule.

He also alleged that the government had failed to fulfill its electoral promises such as increase in old age pensions and phased introduction of prohibition on liquor.

Naidu alleged that the government was being vengeful against him and his party. Attributing the alleged factional killings that took place in Anantapur district to the chief minister, Naidu depicted him as a factionalist. It may be recalled that when he was the chief minister, Naidu in his attack on the opposition tried constantly to brand YSR as a factionalist.

All through the press conference, Naidu did not spell out his own stand on several issues which he raised against the government to prove a point. The issues in point are liquor prohibition, introduction of service taxes, power purchase agreements (PPAs) with which he was associated while in power.

When a reporter asked Naidu to give a comparative picture as to what his government did in the first hundred days vis-a-vis Rajasekhara Reddy, he said it was for the journalists to undertake that job.