YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was supposed to have a meeting with his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao at the latter’s camp office Pragathi Bhavan at 11.30 am to discuss the Godavari-Krishna linkage project and other issues.
According to the original schedule, Jagan was to leave his Tadepalli residence by 9.30 am by helicopter to Gannnavaram airport from where he was to take a special flight to reach Begumpet airport in Hyderabad by 11 am.
After a brief rest at Lotus Pond, he was expected to arrive at Pragathi Bhavan by 11.45 am.
But, Jagan could not start from his residence even till afternoon.
According to reliable sources, there were some problems with his official helicopter and the same was intimated to him. The officials told him that the chopper was facing some landing problems.
Naturally, Jagan was agitated as his meeting with KCR had to be postponed.
In fact, he experienced a similar problem with his chopper during his aerial survey of flood affected areas in Nandyal in Kurnool district a couple of days ago. There also, the chopper had some issues during the landing.
One wonders how the officials of the state aviation academy be so callous in avoiding technical snags in the chief minister’s chopper, especially after experienced an unfortunate situation in which Jagan’s father Y S Rajasekhar Reddy died in the chopper crash 10 years ago.
Apparently, the aviation officials did not take enough precautions before arranging the official helicopter to Jagan.
As per the protocol, landing details should be given in the form of degrees, minutes and seconds, but the officers are not following the rules creating problems.
The CMO has directed the Kurnool collector to conduct an inquiry into the incident and Kurnool DRM Venkateswaran as appointed as an investigation officer, sources said.