YSRCP chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy on Monday lashed out at Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and accused him of 'shamelessly' cosying up to the Congress party.
"Naidu is now trying to make friends with the Congress by sending his family members to meet Rahul Gandhi. They even supported the Congress candidate in the recent Rajya Sabha deputy chairman elections. He earlier 'married' BJP, TRS, CPI, CPM and Jana Sena parties and left them in the lurch after his need was over. Now, he is trying to marry Congress as well," Jagan said.
"He is not at all interested to continue with the TDP’s original ideals of being an ‘anti-Congress’ party," he added.
The Opposition leader was addressing a massive crowd at Kotavuratla in Visakhapatnam District as part of his Praja Sankalpa Yatra.
Jagan was taking a dig at Naidu's daughter-in-law, Nara Brahmani, who was among the industrialists who attended a meeting of CEOs addressed by Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Hyderabad last week.
The presence of Brahmani and Andhra Pradesh Cabinet Minister N. Lokesh, T. G. Bharath, son of TDP MP T. G. Venkatesh and some industrialists considered close to the TDP was significant in view of the recent political developments.
Bharath told reporters that Rahul Gandhi promised that if voted to power at the Centre, the Congress would accord special category status to Andhra Pradesh as committed by the Congress-led UPA government in 2014 at the time of the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh to carve out Telangana.
In March, the TDP pulled of the BJP-led NDA over its refusal to accord the special status. Subsequently, Naidu had shared the dais with Rahul Gandhi during the swearing-in ceremony of H. D. Kumaraswamy as the Karnataka Chief Minister.
Last month, the Congress party also backed the no-confidence motion moved by the TDP against the Narendra Modi government.
Jagan launched his six-month-long padayatra or foot march in November last year, virtually kicking off his campaign for the 2019 Assembly elections. He said that he would cover 3,000 km across all 13 districts of the state to interact with the people and know their problems.
Jagan hopes to recreate the magic of his late father YS Rajasekhara Reddy, who had launched a similar padayatra to end the nearly decade-long rule of Chandrababu Naidu in undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2004.
IANS inputs