The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) polit bureau member Yanamala Ramakrishnudu on Wednesday said there was a total breakdown of law and order in the State and that Andhra Pradesh was a fit case for Centre’s intervention to invoke Article 356 and impose President’s rule.
In a statement, the former Finance Minister slammed what he called “jungle raj” of the YCP government and said the “goons who went on the rampage, attacking the TDP offices and cadres across the State on Tuesday have the tacit support of the government and the Police Department.”
He said by attacking the main office of the Opposition TDP, the government is trying to send out an open threat demonstrating what would become of people who tried to question its failures. “This is an unprecedented crisis. The entire police machinery has been systematically debilitated and since the government itself is resorting to a Constitutional breakdown, there is no other option but to invoke Article 356,” he said.
There was no protection to people in the State and the Opposition parties, their leaders and cadres lacked security, he said, wondering if it was wrong to question the government for selling away public properties, on failure to check the rampant ganja smuggling in the State, for pushing the State into deep financial crisis, for failure to provide jobs to the youth, for acute scarcity of sand and for failure to provide work to the poor. “The house of the TDP leader who raised these issues was attacked,” he said.
Mr. Ramakrishnudu slammed the Police Department for preventing the TDP leaders’ participation in bandh. “This is against their democratic right,” he argued, adding that their house arrests would not stop the party from exposing the ruling party’s “sinister designs”. “Now that the Chief Minister has realised that a strong resentment is brewing among the public against the ruling dispensation, he is resorting to violence to create a fear psychosis,” he said.
Mr. Ramakrishnudu urged the Centre to intervene and restore order in the State of Andhra Pradesh.
