Hyderabad: A day after a group of two dozen ministers furnished a lengthy legal note to chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy seeking to exonerate themselves from questionable decisions taken during the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s regime, a debate was kicked off in the ruling party on the motives behind the mission and its implications. While the immediate political import of this move is not lost on anyone, the other serious question that has cropped up is the impact it might have on the cases that the CBI has slapped on YSR’s son, Jagan Mohan Reddy, who is currently in prison.
Even Congressmen privately concede that the coming together of 24 ministers is not out of any love for Dharmana Prasada Rao, the second minister to have resigned from the Kiran Reddy cabinet on charges of facilitating quid pro quo investments in Jagan Mohan Reddy’s companies. Rather it is said to be an act of self-preservation lest they attract similar attention from law enforement agencies.
By shooting off his resignation -- yet to be accepted -- Dharmana has brought home to fellow ministers that if they don’t act now, it could be their turn sooner than later. “Just as Dharmana was named after Nimmagadda Prasad and others in the Vanpic case, can home minister Sabita Indra Reddy be left out in regard to decisions that have already landed IAS officer Y Srilakshmi and others in prison? The problem now is not of one minister or IAS officer. It engulfs many,” a minister remarked.
However, the minister’s mission to the chief minister seems to have gone further than self-preservation. Implicit in it was a trace of belligerence, perhaps a collective threat display to the Congress high command. Former minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu of the TDP acknowledged as much while remarking that Dharmana’s resignation has not been acted upon for fear of a collapse of the government.
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