Jagan refuses to be part of Naidu's 'pompous' swearing-in

Flaying the ‘pomp and show’ associated with the ‘coronation’ of N Chandrababu Naidu, Jaganmohan Reddy, chief of YSR Congress party, on Saturday said he does not want to be part of the extravagant swearing-in ceremony when Andhra Pradesh is in deep crisis.

“On one hand, Naidu has been seeking donations from the people to build the capital city and on the other an estimated Rs 30 crore is being lavishly spent on the swearing-in ceremony which at this point of time is not wise and I leave it to their wisdom, but I personally will not ratify such a wasteful expenditure,” he said after a meeting of five north coastal Andhra districts.

A section of the media, Reddy alleged, has been trying to project that Naidu has limited resources and empty coffers suggesting that loan waiver may be difficult but people have given YSRCP mandate to question the Telugu Desam Party governance and the steps being taken to fulfil waiver of agriculture loans.

On the review meetings, he said this is an exercise carried out to analyse in detail the shortcomings in some of the constituencies the party lost which would enable it to take corrective measures in the coming days. “It is not that we were in power and lost now and are searching for reasons. We started off with one member of Parliament and one member of legislative assembly, went up to two MPs and 20 MLAs and we now have eight MPs and 67 MLAs in Seemandhra and nine MPs and 70 MLAs as a whole,” Reddy said. 

The swearing-in ceremony, scheduled for Sunday around 7.30 pm at Nagarjuna Nagar located between Vijayawada and Guntur, is expected to be attended by lakhs of people and VIPs besides three Union Ministers -- Rajnath Singh, Venkaiah Naidu and Nirmala Sitharaman.