New Delhi, January 14: Former Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy on Tuesday virtually dared the Congress to take action against its MLAs and MPs who were with him and made it clear that the Andhra Pradesh government was surviving at his mercy.
Staging a show of strength, Reddy undertook his ‘Jala Deeksha’ at the Jantar Mantar here along with Congress MLAs and MPs. Despite the party high command’s directives, 24 MLAs and two MPs attended the deeksha, besides MLAs from the TDP and the PRP.
The Congress rushed Union ministers Veerappa Moily and Ghulam Nabi Azad to Hyderabad to take stock of the situation and take remedial measures.
Jagan arrived in New Delhi in a special train with 3,000 supporters and began a day-long fast to highlight the ‘injustice’ to Andhra Pradesh in the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal Award and the plight of farmers.
Addressing the gathering, Jagan said, “I am doing the Congress a favour by not asking my people to resign. If I wanted to, I could have done that a long time back. The government would have fallen. But my people are very clear that in 2014, they will contest not on a Congress ticket but on my party’s ticket.”
In fact, Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy himself asked some of the MLAs not to attend the deeksha. Moreover, the Congress MLAs from Kadapa district threw a challenge at Minister D L Ravindra Reddy to contest and get elected with the photo of former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. The open defiance was very much visible as speaker after speaker criticised both the State and Central governments for neglecting the interests of the farmers.
The day ended with his courting arrest along with the MLAs backing him. The arrests happened after Reddy refused to wind up his fast at the end of the day, claiming he and his supporters would continue the protest overnight.
–Agencies