One after the other, ministers of Andhra Pradesh are turning shrill after two of their colleagues were charge-sheeted by CBI in the illegal assets case against YSR Congress chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy.
While their outcry was rather subdued when state Roads and Buildings Minister Dharmana Prasada Rao was named as an accused in CBI charge-sheet in August last, it has suddenly become vociferous after Home Minister Sabita Indra Reddy was listed as accused in the fifth charge-sheet last week.
The very ministers who had stopped discharging their official duties in late 2009 demanding that Jagan be made the Chief Minister, immediately after his father YS Rajasekhara Reddy’s death, are now going to the extent of demanding “capital punishment” for him for having “looted the state’s wealth”.
The ministers are calling themselves innocent even as CBI is expected to spread its dragnet further in the days to come.
“We blindly signed on every dotted line that YSR placed before us. We never had the guts to question him and we were never aware of the shady deals that Jagan executed behind the scenes,” state Finance Minister Anam Ramanarayana Reddy claimed, pleading innocence, while making a reference to Sabita.
He didn’t stop at that and went on to demand that Jagan “be hanged” for all the “wrongdoings”.
“He has no right to live on this earth,” Anam said while making accusations against Jagan’s brother-in-law and evangelist Anil Kumar.
The Finance Minister alleged that Jagan has turned the Chanchalguda jail in Hyderabad, where he was lodged as an under-trial prisoner for about 11 months now, into the YSR Congress party office.
Pradesh Congress Committee president and state Transport Minister Botsa Satyanarayana was quick to endorse Anam’s views.
“Anam’s remarks against Jagan and his family are cent per cent true,” Botsa alleged and said Jagan should not be voted to power in the next elections.
Another minister K Parthasarathy echoed his colleagues’ claims and said no minister dared to question YSR and merely followed his instructions on every issue.
Parthasarathy is continuing as minister in the Kiran Kumar Reddy Cabinet despite a special court here convicting him in a FERA violation case.
He is also under the Election Commission’s scanner for having submitted false affidavits during his election in 2004 and 2009 by concealing facts.
This was not the first time the ministers attacked Jagan and his family.
Even during the by-elections in May last, leaders beginning with the Chief Minister had accused Jagan of shady deals when his father was the Chief Minister.
They, however, have failed to answer certain basic questions put by many political leaders on the whole issue — Why did they remain silent when shady deals were taking place behind their back? Did any one of them question the then Chief Minister about such deals even after the principal opposition Telugu Desam Party published a book on the unprecedented corrupt deals that were bleeding the state?
For the past many months, TDP has been crying hoarse and petitioned authorities in the state to prevent illegal happenings in the jail.
–PTI