No doubt there is a sand crisis in Andhra Pradesh at present, a fact which was acknowledged even by chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy.
But the opposition parties, particularly the Telugu Desam Party and Jana Sena Party, are trying to take maximum political mileage out of this crisis by attributing every suicide that happens in the state to sand issue.
For example, one person Ramesh committed suicide by hanging himself at his house in Bhartipudi village of Bapatla mandal in Guntur district on Monday night.
Even before the police reached there, the local TDP leaders started making a hue and cry saying he is a construction labourer and he had committed suicide due to lack of work because of sand crisis.
However, enquiries revealed that Ramesh was actually an agriculture labourer and has been habituated to boozing. The police said he was also involved in a few criminal cases and had faced jail in the past.
“He was never involved in any construction work,” the police said.
Similarly, one person Veerababu died after falling from a three-storied building in Kakinada.
Though the police investigation revealed that it was an accident, the local TDP leaders sought to project it as a suicide and said Veerababu had resorted to extreme step due to lack of work because of sand crisis.
YSRC MLA Dwarampudi Chandrasekhar Reddy who called on the family alleged that the TDP leaders had tried to lure the family to claim that they were construction workers so that they would get compensation from the government and that they would also pay money.
What is worse, TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu’s son and MLC Nara Lokesh came all the way from Vijayawada and tried to politicize the issue.
At some other place when a person went to a hospital with cardiac ailment, the TDP claimed that he was also a construction worker.