YSR Congress party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who has come into power with a landslide majority in the recent assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, completed one month in office on Sunday.
Looking back at his performance as the chief minister, one can say Jagan has earned more or less good name as an administrator. There has been no criticism from any quarter, including from the opposition, over his governance till date.
The Telugu Desam Party leadership has decided to give sufficient time to Jagan before making any attack, but he has not given any such scope at least in the first month.
The only issue that the TDP could raise so far with regard to Jagan’s administration was the demolition of Praja Vedika, a conference hall adjacent to the residence of TDP president and opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu.
From the day one, Jagan has been emphasising on eradication of corruption in high places.
Within his party, he sent a stern warning to all his party leaders not to indulge in any sort of corruption. He has kept the YSRC leader having shady background away from the power centre.
At the same, Jagan has decided to dig out all the malpractices of the previous TDP government.
He stopped all the works that were taken up by violating the tender norms and ordered probe by a cabinet sub-committee into 30-odd agreements signed by the Naidu government, especially with regard to power purchase agreements with solar and wind power producers and also in the capital construction at Amaravati.
By taking up demolition of Praja Vedika, he sent a stern message to the people that he will not tolerate any decision that involved corruption.
In the formation of his cabinet, too, Jagan showed his mark. For the first time in the country, he appointed five deputy chief ministers representing weaker sections and gave 60 per cent of cabinet berths to such vulnerable sections.
Another brownie point scored by Jagan was his announcement in the floor of the assembly that he would not indulge in poaching of opposition party MLAs and that if anybody wants to join YSRC, they should first resign from their posts.
The decisions taken by Jagan at his first cabinet meeting including waiver of interest on crop loans, increase of pension amount under YSR Pension Scheme, Amma Vodi, YSR Rythu Bharosa etc., brought him a lot of good will among the people.
His attempt to restore friendly relations with the neighbouring Telangana government and also with the Centre showed his political maturity.
The Centre reciprocated his gesture with liberal release of all pending funds, besides approving the revised estimates of Polavaram project.
At the same time, Jagan remained firm on his demand for special category status to Andhra Pradesh. He took it up with the Centre when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, raised it at the Niti Aayog meeting and also got a resolution passed in the state assembly.
Though there are not many negative points scored by Jagan in the last one month, analysts say his acts of vengeance against his political rival Chandrababu Naidu did not augur well for him.
The alleged attacks on the TDP workers across the state by the YSRC activists, besides his attempts to humiliate Naidu in the form of reduction of security cover and serving of demolition notice on his house showed that Jagan government was resorting to witch-hunt in the very first month.
“There is nothing wrong in exposing the corruption in the previous government, but it should not be done in such a way as to deliberately targeting the political rivals,” an analyst said.
(Venkat Arikatla can be reached at venkat@greatandhra.com)