Hyderabad, June 02: Thirteen ministers of the state government have made a vain attempt to convince the media that there was no failure on the part of the government in handling the Odarpu Yatra of Congress MP YS Jaganmohan Reddy peacefully last week.
They tried hard to defend chief minister K Rosaiah and to drive home the point that the there were no differences between the ministers and the chief minister, and the decisions were collective.
Ministers J Geetha Reddy, G Venkat Reddy, P Laxmaiah, P Sabitha Reddy, K Parthasarathi, J Krishna Rao, D Nagendar, M Mukhesh Goud, B Sreenivasa Reddy, Damodar Rajanarasimha, D Manikya Varaprasad, D Sridhar Babu and S Vijayarama Raju held a press conference here today to dispel the “misconception”.
Information and public relations minister and leader of the House in the Assembly, J Geetha Reddy said the chief minister had called all those ministers who were available in the city and held a meeting on a day before the Odarpu Yatra. He wanted them (ministers) to abide by the decision of the party high command and asked each one to talk.
All the ministers in one voice stated that they would abide by the decision of the party’s national leadership and, finally, the chief minister too said the same, she recalled. Since he was leaving on a tour of Prakasam district, the chief minister entrusted the law and order control to home minister P Sabitha Reddy and told her to act as the situation demanded, Geetha Reddy explained.
The I PR minister categorically stated that the government had no intention of stopping the tour. The home minister ordered a CID inquiry into the incidents at Mahabubabad and action would be taken, based on the probe report, against those who failed to control the situation.
Geetha Reddy said that other members of the cabinet, D Prasada Rao, B Satyanarayana, N Raghuveera Reddy, A Ramanarayana Reddy and V Vasanthkumar, who were not present at the press conference, also held a similar opinion. She asserted that the decision on Jagan tour was collective.
Sabitha Reddy said security arrangements had been made according to the rule book which is followed when top leaders go on tour in precarious conditions. The same steps were taken when Jagan had toured West Godavari and Khammam district, Chiranjeevi Polavaram, K Chandrasekhara Rao Warangal and N Chandrababu Naidu Nalgonda, she said.
As for Jagan’s tour, Sabitha said, about 2,750 police personnel were deployed in Warangal district, an SPrank officer and 60 policemen accompanied Jagan on the train, security was arranged at 15 railway stations up to Mahabubabad and 120 police personnel were deployed on the platform of the Mahabubabad railway station.
In spite of the elaborate security arrangements, the tragic incidents of violence took place at Mahabubabad, she wondered and said a CID inquiry was ordered into the failure to control the situation at Mahabubabad. Action would be taken against those who acted with bias, she said and added that the reports of the recovery of about 90 bullets of private persons would be confirmed after receiving the CID report.
Replying to a question whether Congress men had been cleared out of the Mahabubabad railway station, health minister D Nagendar denied display of bias towards or against any section. But he did not answer as to why the police did not protect the public representatives who were at the railway station. The ministers also failed to explain how the clashes took place at Mahabubabad.
——-Agencies