Hyderabad, September 21: In a surprise development, Kadapa Mayor P Ravindranath Reddy named Kadapa MP YS Jagan Mohan Reddy as one of the three leaders in the state who were making life difficult for him, the other two being chief minister K Rosaiah and TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu. This they were doing because they were propelled by the desire to become the chief minister of the state, he said.
Ravindranath Reddy is the brother-in-law of the late YS Rajasekhara Reddy.
The Kadapa mayor, however, did not elaborate how they were trying to reach their goals but said that in the process he became a victim. The mayor, after meeting chief secretary SV Prasad, told media persons that the government was acting on reports published in a section of media. He said he was contemplating filing a defamation case against the officials who had ‘implicated’ him in cases related to seizure of fertilisers in Kadapa district. He maintained that IPC 420 cannot be invoked against the owner of a fertiliser mixing plant on the basis of some discrepancies in the vouchers found with drivers (of seized trucks). It was the mistake of a clerk but the police had acted with undue haste to book him, he said.
He said he was only a sleeping partner in the fertiliser mixing plant and since his name was in the plant’s owners list, he became the automatic choice for attack. He further claimed that just because he happened to be the partner of a plant, all the plants had come under the scanner of the agriculture department for the last 20 days. They verified records for more than 14 times, he added.
Pointing out that the officials of the vigilance department, at the time of verification, had admitted that they did not find anything out of the way, he wondered why they had not reported it to the government. He questioned why the police had to swing into action when it was the job of the agriculture department. “Let donkey do its job and the dog, its,” he said.
He wanted to know why the case had not been transferred to the agriculture department yet. The Kadapa mayor alleged that the government was harassing him for no fault of his.
Ravindranath Reddy informed that after the mixing plants were banned from procuring urea, his plant had stopped production.
–Agencies