The opposition Telugu Desam Party has been raising a lot of hue and cry over the arrest of its senior legislator Kinjarapu Atchen Naidu in the multi-crore Employees State Insurance scam, but its erstwhile ally Bharatiya Janata Party has welcomed his arrest, but not without putting a rider.
BJP state president Kanna Lakshminarayana defended the arrest of Atchen Naidu.
“There is no doubt that people who allegedly involved in scandals should be arrested and prosecuted. This has been the stand of the BJP right from the beginning. We have also clearly told several times that there was a largescale corruption during the TDP regime,” he said.
However, Kanna has refused to appreciate the Jagan Mohan Reddy government’s efforts to curb corruption.
“Jagan has to prove his sincerity by taking against the YSR Congress party leaders, too, as there have been a lot of allegations of corruption against them,” he said.
The BJP state president alleged that corruption had been rampant during the present YSR regime as well.
“Jagan’s own party MLAs and MPs are openly saying this. If Jagan wants to take action against the TDP leaders, he should act against his own party leaders as well,” he demanded.
BJP state spokesman Lakshmipathi Raja demanded that if Atchen’s role in the scam was proved in the court of law, the government should recover the corrupt money from him.
He reminded that Atchen Naidu had tried to sling mud against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the ESI scam.
“If anybody tries to drag the name of Modi into this present case, we won’t tolerate,” he warned.