Jagan Mohan Reddy, mother resign over Andhra split

They sent in their resignation letters to the Speakers of the respective houses

Jailed Kadapa member of Parliament (MP) and YSR Congress president, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, and his mother Y S Vijayamma, member of legislative assembly (MLA) from Pulivendula, on Saturday announced their resignations from the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assembly, respectively, to protest the Congress Working Committee (CWC)’s decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh.

“They resigned in protest against the way the Congress party has been treating the people of Andhra Pradesh over the issue of bifurcation, among other things,” Mekapati Rajamohan Reddy, party MP from Nellore, told reporters. Jagan Mohan Reddy has been in jail for about a year, as courts have refused to grant him bail in a case involving alleged quid pro quo investments in his firms.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has already filed five charge sheets in the case.

A few days before the CWC formally endorsed statehood for Telangana, 16 YSR Congress MLAs from coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema had resigned. The party leadership had tried to minimise the backlash from its ranks in the Telangana region, though unsuccessfully, by saying that it had no role in the resignation of the MLAs from Seemandhra. Saturday's  move by the party president and the working president made matters even clearer.

The resignations by the YSR Congress MLAs had already created a chain reaction in the Seemandhra region, with scores of  MLAs from both the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party announcing their resignations, citing the anger of Seemandhra’s people against the state’s bifurcation. Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and the TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu also came out in support of the concerns of Seemandhra’s people in the last couple of days, in a departure from their earlier stance.

The YSR Congress party's move has also been guided by its firm belief that the the decision to divide the state was apparently taken to restrict its influence to one region in the next elections.

Though the party  maintains that it was not opposed to the statehood for Telangana, its ranks in the region, including a major chunk of its leaders, quit the party soon after the resignations episode unfolded.