Terming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a communal party, Union Minister Panabaka Lakshmi has said that voting for the YSR Congress and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the Lok Sabha elections means strengthening the hands of the BJP indirectly.
“While the TDP has struck a pre-poll alliance with the BJP, the YSRC is in for a post-poll tie-up with the saffron party,” she opined after filing her nomination from the Bapatla Lok Sabha (SC reserved) seat here on Wednesday.
The ‘secular’ Congress alone can ensure the welfare of all sections of people, including SCs, STs, BCs and minorities and development with a renewed vigour, said Ms. Lakshmi, while seeking another term for the Congress government at Centre from the voters by highlighting the welfare initiatives undertaken during the UPA I and II regime. It was UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi who had ensured a special package for the development of the Seemandhra region, she said, adding that the Congress needed to be returned to power for the all-round development of residuary Andhra Pradesh.
Capital issueMs. Lakshmi, accompanied by Union Minister J.D. Seelam, said that they had suggested that the capital of the successor State should be set up somewhere between Prakasam and Krishna districts to ensure the dispersed development of all 13 districts in the region, instead of a capital-centric development.
Mr. Seelam said that BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, going by his track-record in Gujarat, was posing a threat to the secular fabric of the nation.
“The Gujarat-model of development is a lop-sided one as the State has cut a sorry figure in human development index parameters,” he said before Darsi Pavan Kumar filed his nomination for the Ongole Lok Sabha constituency.
