Naidu halts yatra

Tiruvur (Krishna): The Telugu Desam chief N Chandrababu Naidu halted his six-day-long bus yatra in Krishna district on Wednesday and returned to Hyderabad. Naidu will resume his yatra after a brief break of about four days. He is scheduled to hold a meeting with Telangana TDP leaders on Thursday and finalise the programmes that they need to take up in the region.

According to party sources, Naidu chose to apply the brakes on his yatra since party leaders from West Godavari had advised him to wait for a few more days, considering that tempers were running high in the district at present and it might be a problem to organise his yatra. For, traders, employees and even school children have been on the roads, demanding united Andhra Pradesh.

Besides, party sources say, Naidu wants to stem reported dissidence in the district unit. The Krishna district president, Devineni Umamaheswara Rao, said that some of the MLAs from Seemandhra and Telangana regions were contemplating to quit the party.

On the last leg of the bus yatra in the district, Naidu had a tough time in replying to the slogans of his own party activists, including the meeting at Reddigudem. There the activists raised slogans in favour of Samaikyandhra and Junior NTR. The TDP president told them that he had come to share the feelings of the people. “I have come here to address the people, tell them what had led to the present political crisis, and extend support to them. Don’t interrupt me,” he told the slogan-shouting activists. In A Konduru, the TD chief faced resistance from the YSR Congress activists for his ‘pro-Telangana’ stance.