Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday alleged that state Assembly Speaker Tammineni Seetharam was not enforcing COVID-19 preventive measures in the House. Cautioning that ‘negligence’ was posing a serious risk to all the MLAs and MLCs who were attending the winter session of the Legislature, he noted that when the Parliament was taking exceptional safeguards by erecting partitions between members for protection, Seetharam was not taking steps for the same.

"From the beginning, the ruling YSRCP leaders from the Chief Minister to Ministers to the MLAs, were behaving recklessly, thereby posing a greater risk to public health," he alleged. Referring to Karumuri Nageswara Rao, a ruling party MLA who recently contracted the virus, Naidu said he recommended all his party leaders to go into self quarantine.

"Almost all the YSRCP MLAs and MLCs were also not wearing masks or observing physical distancing, in utter disregard for the general health of everyone," he claimed. Instead of acting like a custodian, he said the Speaker was not bothering at all in taking precautionary measures.

"The CM and his party leaders were brutally negligent from the beginning in respect of fighting the virus. They did not learn any lessons but also behaved atrociously when Tirupati MP Balli Durga Prasada Rao died due to infection," he alleged.

Several other public representatives in the state have contracted with the virus. The state's total tally of cases reached 8.7 lakh, out of which 6,742 are active cases. The total number of tests crossed the one crore mark to reach 1.02 crore in one day, recently.