Date:04/02/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/02/04/stories/2005020406660400.htm

Andhra Pradesh

APCC chief questions TDP claim

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, FEB. 3. The Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president, K. Keshava Rao, questioned the claim of the Telugu Desam Party that the Chief Minister, Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy, has been involved in 35 criminal cases.

Talking to presspersons here on Thursday, Dr. Keshava Rao asked the TDP president, N. Chandrababu Naidu, to explain his inability to pursue the cases to their logical end while he was in power. "What was he doing all those nine years," he said.

Ridiculing the contents of the booklet released by the TDP leaders in New Delhi on the murder of Paritala Ravi, MLA, he asked Mr. Naidu to explain why no eyewitness had filed the complaint instead of the MLA's uncle, who was not present at the spot.

Ridicules demand

Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy was a democratically elected leader of a majority party and had every right to continue in his present position. He had become Chief Minister after people voted him to power and the party MLAs elected him as their leader through a democratic process, he said.

Referring to the TDP demand to dismiss the YSR Government, he wondered whether there was such a constitutional provision. "Is not Mr. Naidu aware of the fact that the President of India cannot dismiss State Governments on the plea of the Opposition leaders," he asked.

On the TDP's attempts at branding the Chief Minister as a factionist by releasing a booklet titled "If a factionist became a Chief Minister," he asked whether the Congress should respond by releasing a fact-sheet on Mr. Naidu who had earned the sobriquet of being a "political back-stabber."

`Improper projection'

Condemning the role of a section of the media in furthering the political agenda of the TDP, he asked whether it was proper on its part to distort facts and project criminals as heroes. He dismissed reports that the AICC had expressed concern over the law and order situation in Andhra Pradesh as a figment of imagination.