Welcoming the announcement of the Jana Sena Party (JSP) to forge an alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to jointly fight against the ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) in Andhra Pradesh, Communist Party of India (CPI) State secretary K. Ramakrishna has suggested that the two opposition parties focus their attention also on bringing together all the like-minded parties to defeat the “undemocratic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)“ and the “autocratic YSRCP” in the 2024 elections.
Addressing the media here on September 16 (Saturday), Mr. Ramakrishna said that Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy was out on bail in a series of cases relating to serious economic offences only with the “blessings of the BJP at the Centre,” which allegedly misused the Central agencies, including the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and the Income Tax Department to subject the opposition party leaders to trouble selectively.
Both the BJP and YSRCP resorted to vindictive politics and denied political space for the opposition parties, he alleged.
Mr. Ramakrishna cited the example of the arrest of former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who was the pivot of the Aam Admi Party’s political expansion plans, by foisting cases against him.
On the other hand, the YSRCP government had misused the CID police to arrest TDP supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu on “trumped up charges,” he alleged.
In this context, he recalled that the State police did not facilitate the arrest of YSRCP MP Avinash Reddy by the CBI in the murder case of former MP Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy citing law and order problem in Kurnool.
He said Mr. Naidu and JSP chief Pawan Kalyan should take note that the YSRCP fully backed the “sectarian agenda” of the BJP government at the Centre, which was out to rewrite the Constitution to deny space for secularists in the country, and work for politically isolating the “communal BJP” at the Centre and the “autocratic YSRCP” in the State.
He said the YSRCP government had set a bad precedent by suppressing democratic protests by not only the opposition party activists but by every section of people, including teachers and electricity employees.
It was unfortunate that the AgriGold financial fraud victims fighting for justice for nine long years were disallowed by the police from attending a meeting held at the CPI office in Vijayawada.
