Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

YSR padayatra to give boost to Congress

By Our Staff Reporter

Rajahmundry May 30. The padayatra of CLP, leader Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, which concluded in the district on Thursday, was a big boost to the Congress. Though marred by some discordant notes on the first day, when Congress leaders like Dokala Murali and G.V. Harsha Kumar, both PCC joint secretaries opposed to the DCC president, Jakkampudi Ramamohana Rao, organised separate welcome rallies to receive Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy, in the remaining days, it was largely a show of Mr. Ramamohana Rao only. Mr. Ramamohana Rao once again proved his grip over the party in the district. He is a known disciple of Dr. Reddy and this padayatra has further tightened the bond between the two.

East Godavari has the largest number of 21 Assembly constituencies and Mr. Ramamohana Rao is the only Congress MLA, representing Kadiam Assembly segment, in the district. Except for the above mentioned incident involving, Mr. Murali and Mr. Harsha Kumar on the first day, there was show of unity at all levels and leaders from all factions participated in the padayatra. The Youth Congress district chief, K.V. Satyanarayana Reddy, was another leader who had been monitoring the padayatra continuously.

The padayatra passed through only six of the 21 Assembly segments in the district, covering a distance of about 160 km in the upland areas. But the programme was chalked out in such a way that everyday, leaders from three Assembly segments had to make arrangements for the padayatra.

The padayatra, which received tumultuous response from all sections of the people, was eventful in the sense that Dr. Reddy had to suspend it for six days and there was a lot of suspense about his continuing it. It was also in East Godavari district that Dr. Reddy reached the important milestone of covering 1,000 km of his 1,450-km marathon.

Dr. Reddy who had constantly criticised the Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu for not fulfilling the promises made during election campaigns of 1999, himself made a number of promises which included free power supply to farmers, rollback of power tariff to domestic users of certain categories to the rates prevalent three years ago, increasing the income ceiling for issue of ration cards from the present Rs.11,000 to Rs.36,000 a year, doubling of pension amount from the present Rs.75 a month, rehabilitation of Yeleru reservoir oustees, justice to the ayacutdars of Yeleru reservoir and last but not the least, taking up of the multi-crore multi-purpose Polavaram project, if Congress was voted back to power.

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