Cornered by CBI probe into his assets, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, MP, on Saturday made his mother Y S Vijayamma write a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pleading to “bring some semblance of justice, sanity and fair play” in the ongoing investigation.
In a five-page letter to the Prime Minister, the late YSR’s widow attacked Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and asked if the CBI investigation against her son was not a clear case of “witch-hunting and political vendetta”.
“I write this letter with a heavy heart. I am shocked at the brazenness with which the central government is stifling dissent in any form, be it the way the Anna Hazare movement is handled or the way CBI has been unleashing a reign of terror in the name of investigation into alleged disproportionate assets case of Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who left Congress party to start the YSR Congress”, Ms. Vijayamma said.
CBI raids on Mr. Jagan’s residences and businesses only served the main purpose of “terrorizing and demoralizing” the YSR Congress party cadre, she alleged.
“Can anybody believe that CBI is doing all this without a prompting from the higher-up?” she said.
As long as Mr. Jagan was in Congress “in complete obedience and submission to Sonia Gandhi”, he was an “honourable man” but the day he decided to go out, challenging her authority, not only did he become the “most corrupt and immoral but also his late father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy became a scandalous person,” Ms. Vijayamma said.
Mr. Jagan’s mother recalled that the Prime Minister as well as Sonia Gandhi praised YS Rajasekhara Reddy as a great leader and “it is no secret that she admired late Dr Reddy as a great mass leader”.
“The same person now feels that he was a bad man merely because his son Jagan defied her authority,” the YSR Congress leader pointed out.
Referring to the allegations against her son, Ms. Vijayamma said the entire issue hinged on whether the State government did any favour at all to the organisations (that invested in Mr. Jagan’s companies) when his father was the Chief Minister in violation of policies, rules and regulations.
“The most important thing to establish that some favours were done is that there must be a policy in place and there must have been a gross violation of that policy deliberately with a view to favouring them”, she said.
CBI must have first looked into this matter instead of “terrorizing the investors with a clear design to demoralise everybody connected with Mr. Jagan”, Ms. Vijayamma said.
“It is indeed very important to first establish conclusively that favours were done to them in terms of violation of existing cabinet decisions or policies,” she said.
She also referred to the Adarsh housing scam in Mumbai in which names of two Union Cabinet ministers name figure.
“It was unheard of, at least in this country, that houses and office premises of all investors in private corporate bodies were indiscriminately raided”, the YSR Congress leader charged.
She asked if CBI ever raided the premises of other big business houses of the country.
Commending the Prime Minister as “a great statesman who took India to high levels of economic prosperity and inclusive growth”, she asked him to ensure “genuine political dissent is not hounded at the will and pleasure of some elements who seem to indirectly control the Central government”.
