The Telugu Desam Party, which is always waiting for an issue to attack the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh, has got one more such an issue on Tuesday.
Even as the Andhra Pradesh state assembly paid rich tributes to industries minister Mekapati Goutham Reddy who died of heart attack last month, it has ignored former chief minister of combined Andhra Pradesh Konijeti Rosaiah, who hailed from Guntur district.
Nobody knows whether the Jagan government has done it deliberately or has forgotten to pay tributes to Rosaiah, but it has given an opportunity to the TDP leaders to target the ruling YSR Congress party.
It may be mentioned that Jagan, who was expecting to be anointed as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh soon after his father Y S Rajasekhar Reddy’s death in September 2009, was stunned when the Congress high command decided to continue Rosaiah as the chief minister.
Jagan, who was then Kadapa MP, used to adopt a confrontationist stand against Rosaiah and even picked up an argument with the veteran leader during the parliamentary party meeting for not releasing funds to Kadapa.
After floating the YSR Congress, there were no instances of Jagan interacting with Rosaiah. It was only after the latter’s death recently, Jagan issued a statement condoling his death.
So, when the Andhra assembly ignored paying tributes to Rosaiah, the TDP took strong exception to it.
“It only shows the lack of culture on the part of the chief minister to avoid paying even a small tribute to the grand old man of Andhra politics, who served as AP chief minister and Governor of Tamil Nadu,” the TDP said in a statement.
Describing it as an arrogance of Jagan, the TDP said it was unfortunate that not even a single leader who had earlier worked with Rosaiah bothered to pay tributes to him in the assembly.