Jai Samaikyandhra Party president N. Kiran Kumar Reddy on Saturday exhorted the people to use the simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the State Assembly to take revenge against ‘the betrayers of Samaikyandhra cause’. Maintaining that the opposition Telugu Desam Party and the YSR Congress were responsible for the State’s split, he claimed the bifurcation was done in a ‘most insulting manner’ by the Congress-led UPA government.
“I don’t mind if you vote for any party in the local bodies elections. But the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls should be taken as an opportunity to teach a lesson to betrayers of the Samaikyandhra cause as the prestige and dignity of Telugu people is at stake,” asserted the former Chief Minister of united Andhra Pradesh.
Addressing a series of roadside meetings in Chirala, N.G. Padu and Maddipadu in Prakasam district, he said TDP supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu and YSR Congress chief Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, all-powerful in their respective regional parties, could have averted the State’s division. But they gave a free hand to the Centre, which went ahead with its hasty decision concerning the fate of the State in a most undemocratic manner without addressing the concerns of stakeholders, he said, while popularising the party’s ‘chappal’ symbol along with the party S.N. Padu assembly constituency in-charge Jaganmohan Rao.
Exposing the ‘opportunistic stand’ of the TDP for ‘narrow political gains’, he said, “Mr. Naidu takes credit for Telangana formation while campaigning there. He (Mr. Naidu) has gone to the extent of shouting ‘Jai Telangana’ in the TDP’s Warangal public meeting. But he is crying hoarse about injustice while touring Seemandhra.”
“The bifurcation of the State is against the interests of both Seemandhra and Telangana,” he said, visualising acute power and water shortage in Telangana and serious economic problems in the successor State.
Tanguturi Gopalakrishna, grandson of Andhra’s first Chief Minister T. Prakasam Pantulu, joined the road show and extended support to Mr. Reddy.
Students led by Samaikyandhra Students Front convenor P. Nagaraj organised a motorcycle rally even as women in large numbers waited patiently for over two hours to hear the former Chief Minister.
