Highlights from YS Jagan's speech in Sathenapalli

Sathenapalli: Demanding the TDP MPs to quit Parliament along with the Party members to send a strong message to the nation on Special Category Status (SCS), YSR Congress Party President YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has said that Chandrababu Naidu has made every effort to scuttle the issue during the last four years and he has no moral right to call for All Party meeting.

Addressing a large gathering as part of the Praja Sankalpa Yatra here on Tuesday, the Leader of Opposition said, we held dharnas, protests, fasts and awareness programmes on SCS while Chandrababu Naidu government has made every effort to scuttle them. He has no moral right to call for All-Party meeting but the only option left for him is to follow our path and he should ask all his MPs to quit Parliament by the end of this session along with our members and the en masse resignations of 25 MPs would create a situation where the Centre has to yield to our demand.

We held protests, dharnas and I sat on an indefinite fast seeking SCS. When Prime Minister Narendra Modai was due to arrive, Chandrababu Naidu has ordered to foil my fast by arresting me. Today the very same Chandrababu Naidu shamelessly calls for an All-Party meeting. There were attempts to foil all the protests and bandh calls and students were threatened with dire consequences when they were attending in large numbers to Yuva Bheri programmes which were aimed at creating awareness among the youth.

Till March 15, Chandrababu Naidu was on the other side of the fence and had spoken ill of SCS and favoured the special package and even passed a resolution in the Assembly praising the Centre. When the public opinion turned strong in favour of SCS after we have intensified the agitation and announced that we will move a no confidence motion and will resign on the last day of the session, he and the TDP was in jitters.

The matter further precipitated when we have written letters to leaders of various political parties, regional and national, seeking support to the SCS cause. Their support to our cause has further made him to come down on his knees and on March 16, he took U-turn and announced that his Party would also move a no confidence motion seeking SCS.

The turnaround was so quixotic, that for four years when he was with the government, he did not raise the issue and spoke ill of it all the time and when he came out of the coalition, to cover-up the rampant corruption charges and irregularities in various infrastructure development projects, he took up the SCS issue, of which he was detractor.

He has the audacity to call for an All-Party meeting in a bid to hijack the issue, but reality and records speak about his commitment for the purpose and his opportunist politics, he said.

The local farmers were deprived of water and despite being so close to Nagarjuna Sagar, they were forced to go in for dry-land crops as they were not getting water and the farmers were distressed for lack of MSP, he said.

While it was GST nationwide, in the state we have additional taxes in the form of TST which is the Telugu Desam Service Tax and in this constituency people have to pay another additional tax called KST which is Kodela Service Tax.

Corruption has been rampant from top to bottom in Chandrababu Naidu governance and it is the time of reckoning for the people, he said.