AP: Jagan comes out with election manifesto

HYDERABAD:  YSR Congress chief  Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy came out with an “election manifesto”, three years ahead of the elections in 2014, at his party’s first plenary which began at Idupulapaya in Kadapa district on Friday.The Kadapa MP doled out a whole host of promises with special focus on farmers, students and women. Rounding up the first day’s proceedings of the two-day plenary, he said: “There are no elections now. Yet, I am making these announcements because I am moved by the suffering of the people...after the death of YS Rajasekhara Reddy. The present government is shamelessly apathetic to their plight.”In his 45-minute address, a combative Jagan appealed to the voters to  give him 35 MPs so that “we can dictate terms to the Centre.”His mother Vijayamma’s poignant words set the tone for the conclave and laid the platform for his belligerence. Opening the plenary, Vijayamma recalled the “humiliation” heaped on her family by Congress president Sonia Gandhi when her son had proposed Odarpu Yatra to console families of those who had either died of shock or committed suicide in the wake of YSR’s death. “That prompted us to walk out of Congress,” she reminded the delegates.As many as 18 Congress MLAs and two MPs were on the dais right from the word go and appeared least bothered with the party high command’s warning that such actions would be construed as anti-party activities and result in disqualification. Their defiance is all the more embarrassing for the Congress which is grappling with the crisis triggered by the mass resignations by its Telangana legislators.The YSR Congress plenary adopted 14 resolutions on Day One. Elaborating on them and improvising upon his late father’s schemes, Jagan took the embattled Congress government head-on. “The government has been undermining all the welfare schemes launched by my father,” he alleged and went on to explain how he could bring back the “golden days of YSR regime.”Among his promises are a farmers’ budget, creation of a Rs 3,000-cr fund to purchase farmers’ produce, interest-free loans for women’s groups and farmers and Rs 500 per month to the poor if  two of their children are in school, Rs 750 if they are in intermediate and Rs1,000 for graduation.