Hyderabad: Jagan Mohan Reddy, who began an indefinite fast yesterday to protest against the Centre’s decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh, has said that he hopes the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is able to give the party a ‘secular’ tag.
“How can you discriminate against someone just because they are born with a particular region. This kind of insecurity leads to internal terrorism. This situation should change and Narendra Modi should change the BJP. Every party should be secular,” Mr Reddy told NDTV last night. He also said that that it is ‘indisputable’ that the Gujarat Chief Minister is a good administrator.
Earlier, Mr Reddy amped up his attack considerably against the Congress.
“Someone wanted their son to become PM and divided the state,” Mr Reddy said referring to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and her son Rahul, who is No. 2 in the party.
The government’s decision earlier this week to carve out one of the three regions in Andhra Pradesh as a new state has left the other two parts, jointly referred to as ‘Seemandhra’, seething with protests. Today was the second day of the strike in the 13 districts in the region.
Mr Reddy and his party, the YSR Congress, draw their support from Seemandhra.
Yesterday, Mr Reddy challenged the Congress to explain why it cannot reverse the decision on Telangana given that just last week it withdrew a contentious executive order designed to protest convicted MPs after Mr Gandhi described it as ‘nonsense.’
Mr Reddy’s father, YSR Reddy, was a senior Congressman and Chief Minister of the state when he died in a chopper crash in 2009. Mr Reddy exited the party, claiming he had been sidelined by the Congress.
He left jail just 11 days ago after spending more than a year in prison on corruption charges. The case against him is still being investigated.
