YSRCP leaders who were on their way to the A.U. Engineering College grounds to ‘purify’ the venue where the ‘Dharma Porata Deeksha’ of the TDP was held, were taken into preventive custody on Wednesday morning.
The YSRCP announced its plan on Tuesday itself, and the TDP city unit also expressed its resolve to counter it by reaching the venue with its cadres.
As soon as Rajya Sabha member V. Vijaya Sai Reddy and other leaders came out of the party office near Dr. V.S. Krishna Government College and walked some distance, they were taken into custody by the police and bundled into police vehicles.
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However, Mr. Reddy staged a sit-in on the national highway near the college, bringing the rush-hour traffic to a halt. From there, he walked a few yards before finally getting into a police vehicle. Among the arrested were party city president and former MLA Malla Vijay Prasad, former MLA Golla Babu Rao, Anakapalle party president Gudivada Amarnath, Visakhapatnam East constituency in charge Vamsikrihna Srinivas, and Varudu Kalyani.
‘AU authorities owe
an explanation’
The MP alleged police high-handedness against YSRCP leaders at the behest of the government and recalled the incident at the Visakhapatnam airport on the eve of the investment summit in January 2017 when he, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and several other leaders were not allowed to enter the city. Earlier, at a press conference he said the TDP set a bad precedent by resorting to purifying the route of Mr. Jagan’s Praja Sankalpa Yatra. The AU authorities who had denied permission to the YSRCP stating political programmes could not be allowed and returned the fee paid, should explain why it was given to TDP’s programme now.
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