Former Andhra Pradesh Minister and Kapu leader Mudragada Padmanabham called on members of his community to boycott products of 'Heritage', the dairy company owned by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and his family.
In an open letter, Mudragada said that the products should be shunned as Naidu has 'betrayed' the community.
“People of our community are patronising those products and using them for auspicious programmes. It is not acceptable. What about opportunities for the people of our community?” he asked.
Mudragada also said that he would embark on a state-wide tour soon, to force the government to revisit the issue of reservation for the Kapu community in the state.
He made the announcement just days ago after a meeting of the Kapu Joint Action Committee (KJAC) in Kakinada.
“The meeting felt that it is high time it ‘exposed the true colours of the Chief Minister to all the sections’ and decided that a campaign by Mr. Padmanabham will serve the purpose," KJAC leaders were quoted as saying.
The demand for reservation to the community has been a long standing one and was promised by Naidu if he was voted into power.
In December last year, the Andhra Pradesh government unanimously passed a legislation to provide five percent reservation to the Kapus, and CM Naidu assured the BC community that the reservation would not be unjust to them in any manner.
The reservation for the Kapus will provide them reservation in jobs and educational institutions, and not political reservation.
The agitation by Kapus, seeking inclusion in the Backward Classes category, had turned violent at Tuni on January 31, 2016, when protesters went on the rampage and set fire to a passenger train, a police station, besides police and private vehicles.
Following this, the state government had constituted a BC commission to look into the demands of reservation by the Kapu community.
Reservations for the Kapu community are not yet a reality, since the new 5% quota pushes the total quantum of reservations in the state to over the 50% ceiling mandated by the Supreme Court in 1992 in the Indira Sawhney case.
For the bill to have legal validity, it must now be included in Schedule 9 of the Constitution, as has been done in the case of Tamil Nadu, which has 69% reservations.
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