Jagan Reddy should be hanged, says AP minister,sparks furore

Hyderabad, April 14: An Andhra Pradesh minister's remark calling for hanging of jailed MP YS Jaganmohan Reddy has sparked a furore with the latter's YSR Congress party on Saturday staging protests against him across the state. YSR party leaders staged demonstrations in various parts of the state, burning the effigies of Finance Minister Anam Ramnarayan Reddy, who demanded on Friday that Jaganmohan Reddy be hanged for corruption.

Jagan, as the MP from Kadapa is popularly known, is currently in Chanchalguda jail, in a a case of illegal assets. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has charged him with entering into a conspiracy with his father and then chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy to grant undue favours to companies and individuals who invested in his business.

YSR party leaders found fault with Ramnarayan Reddy for attacking the family of late Rajasekhara Reddy, who made him a minister. Raising slogans against the ministers, the YSR party activists held his mock funeral in Visakhapatnam.

Protests were also held against the finance minister in Hyderabad, Tirupati, Anantapur, Kadapa, Nellore, Guntur, Vijayawada, Karimnagar and other places. Ramnarayan Reddy had on Friday stated that Jagan was the most corrupt leader in the country. "If there is a provision in law for capital punishment for corruption, no one deserves it better than Jagan," the minister said.

Accusing Jagan of looting the state, Ramnarayan Reddy said he committed lot of financial irregularities taking advantage of his father's rule. The finance minister also alleged that despite being in jail, Jagan was trying to destabilize the Congress government.

Ramnarayan Reddy's acerbic attack on Jagan came a few days after the CBI filed the fifth chargesheet, naming Home Minister Sabitha Indra Reddy as an accused. Sabitha is the third minister of Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy's team to be named as an accused in the case. One of the ministers Mopidevi Venkatramna is in judicial custody.

The finance minister, while defending the ministers named in the case, claimed that the ministers had to blindly sign the government orders at the direction of YSR, as the late chief minister was popularly known.

Meanwhile, state Congress chief and Transport Minister Botsa Satyanarayana and Secondary Education Minister K Parthasarathy have backed Ramnarayan Reddy's comments. "Whatever Anam Ramnarayan Reddy said is 100 percent correct," said Botsa Satyanarayana. Parthasarathy said though the ministers did not sign the files blindly, there was definitely Jagan force working behind it.

IANS