Hyderabad: A defiant Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy has decided to go ahead with his controversial 'Odarpu' yatra in Andhra Pradesh's Prakasam district on September 3, dismissing the Congress high command’s warning of bringing disciplinary action against him.
Jagan will embark on the third phase of his yatra, which has invited the wrath of the high command and Chief Minister K. Rosaiah, on September 3, a day after the first death anniversary of his father and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy.
"He is going to go ahead with the yatra on September 3 as decided," Ambatti Rambabu, suspended general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee and Jagan's close aide, told PTI.
Rambabu, who was suspended for his statements against Rosaiah, claimed that Jagan has not received any communication from the Congress high command asking him to call off the yatra. Jagan, a known critic of Rosaiah, had launched his Odarpu yatra in April to meet the families of those who either allegedly committed suicide or died of shock after hearing about his father’s death in a chopper crash in the thick Nallamalai forests in Kurnool district on September 2, 2009.
Mining Minister Srinivas Reddy, who is a relative of Jagan, said the yatra would continue as planned and people in the area have been asking lawmakers to participate in the yatra "as they were elected to the assembly because of YSR."
The 38-year-old Jagan, first time MP from Kadapa, has been in the news ever since he defied the party leaders and went ahead with the yatra in the sensitive Telangana region on May 28.
However, he had to abandon the tour after violence erupted in Mahabubnagar railway station from where he was to begin his yatra.
Later, Jagan met Sonia Gandhi along with his mother Y.S. Vijayalaxmi, MLA from the family pocket borough of Pulivendula in Kadapa district, during which the Congress chief adviced him against the yatra. She had asked him to call all the victims to one place and console them.
But, a defiant Jagan launched the second phase of his yatra on July 8 on the 61th birth anniversary of his father from Srikakulam. Jagan's camp maintains that this is his personal tour and has nothing to do with politics, but the Congress has refused to buy the argument.
The Congress leadership sees Jagan's yatra as an attempt by the young MP to mobilise the support of legislators to topple the Rosaiah government. Andhra Pradesh is one of the biggest states where Congress is in power on its own and the good showing there has helped the party to return to power at the Centre in 2004 and 2009.
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