Senior YSR Congress Party leader and Andhra Pradesh Education Minister Botsa Satyanarayana is known for his blunt and assertive statements. Sometimes, his forthrightness has caused embarrassment to the party, but he remains unapologetic in his style.
In recent days, there has been a war of words between political strategist Prashant Kishor and the YSRCP, which engaged his services for the party’s strategy in the 2019 elections.
Prashant Kishor has been claiming in his latest interviews that YSRCP president and Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is poised to lose significantly in the just-concluded assembly elections. YSRCP leaders have been strongly rebutting his arguments.
Jagan himself declared that the party is going to win more seats than it did in 2019 (151 assembly seats) when Prashant Kishor was heading the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), which worked out the YSRCP strategy.
Despite this, Prashant has stuck to his prediction, stating that the YSRCP is going to face defeat, and if it doesn’t happen, he would face the consequences.
Botsa reacted strongly to Prashant Kishor’s observations.
“Is he Lord Brahma to make predictions or write the scripts for parties? He is just a mercenary. He takes money to perform election gimmicks for parties, nothing more than that,” he said.
He mentioned that Prashant Kishor was hired by the YSRCP for only one election.
“We did not need him again and we let him go because he is just a mercenary,” he said.
Botsa also downplayed the role of I-PAC, which worked for the YSRCP in the recent elections.
“We have engaged the services of I-PAC only for coordination, not for decision making,” he said.
The minister emphasized that I-PAC is only a consultancy firm and the actual decision-making is done by the party high command.
“For now, I-PAC is doing constructive work. But whether it is Prashant Kishor or I-PAC, they are only temporary. Only the party is permanent,” he asserted.