Andhra woman petitions Naidu against TDP MP over property row

Vijayawada, Jul 23: A woman today petitioned Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu against TDP MP Galla Jayadev alleging the latter was preventing sale of her residential building which he partly rented.

The woman, G Padmaja, told the Chief Minister that the MP from Guntur constituency was putting pressure to sell the property to him at a throwaway price by "colluding" with a bank which is auctioning the building after the owner defaulted on loan payment.

She pleaded with Naidu for justice so that her family comes out of the current difficult situation. "I explained my case to the CM. He has instructed his officials to ask the MP not to bid for the property and also vacate it," Padmaja told reporters later at the CMO here.

According to Padmaja, who belongs to a cotton trader's family, they own a building (G+4 in 300 sq yards) at the plush Brindavan Gardens area in Guntur city. Jayadev, at the time of contesting the Lok Sabha seat in 2014, rented the ground and two other floors for a period of three years.

Though a rental agreement was talked of, the MP was "yet to sign it". The landlady occupied the top two floors of the building. In the meantime, Andhra Bank issued a notice for auction of the building as Padmaja defaulted on repayment of loan.

"We owe about Rs 2.5 crore to the bank. The building is currently valued at Rs 8 crore. But the MP is preventing prospective bidders from taking part in the auction and he himself placed a bid for Rs 3.09 crore, which is grossly undervalued."

"We filed a case in the High Court seeking a stay on the auction as the price was being under-quoted and genuine buyers were being prevented. The High Court granted our prayer," Padmaja said.

"Using his clout with the bank officials, the MP subsequently got the stay vacated and even our own lawyer kept us in the dark about it. So we had no opportunity to file an appeal in the Supreme Court," she claimed. Since it was a "prime property", many buyers were coming forward but the MP's staff were preventing them from even seeing the building, thereby blocking the sale.

Given Jayadev's position, the prospective buyers were turning away fearing trouble, she claimed. "We rented our building out to the MP because we too are TDP sympathisers but this is what we are getting in return." "We even tried to somehow get private finance and clear the bank dues but that didn't bear fruit. Now, we are being pushed into a deeper crisis as we are unable to sell our property," Padmaja said.

PTI