YSR Congress national president and Leader of Opposition in Legislative Assembly Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy will cover 120 Assembly constituencies by foot and the remaining 55 by bus during his padayatra from November 2.
This was announced after a crucial meeting with party MPs, MLAs, MLCs and office-bearers at the party headquarters in Hyderabad on Wednesday.
Mr. Jagan had announced that he would begin the ‘padayatra’ from Idupulapaya in Kadapa district and go to Ichchapuram via Chittoor, at the Yuva Bheri programme he held in Anantapur on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, he convened the ‘crucial meeting’ with elected representatives and important office-bearers to ask them how he should go about organising the padayatra as part of which he would cover the State over six months.
At the end of the meeting, it was announced that he would cover 120 constituencies by foot and the remaining 55 constituencies by bus. The details of which constituencies he would cover by foot and the bus were not released.
Nellore MP Mekapati Rajamohan Reddy briefing the media after the meeting said that Mr. Jagan had asked party leaders to give ideas about the activities and programmes that could be conducted in other districts while he was in padayatra in one. In all 46 leaders gave suggestions and voiced their opinions ‘in a highly democratic manner’, the MP said.
Many leaders stressed on the importance of strengthening the booth-level committees involving them and the cadre in all the party programmes. He said that Mr. Jagan should be given a chance to become the Chief Minister.
‘Ready to resign’
Mr. Rajamohan Reddy said that the YSR Congress party MPs were ready to resign from Parliament if that step would secure Special Category Status (SCS) for Andhra Pradesh. He said that it was the responsibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to secure the SCS for the State. If the SCS was granted, the State would have already witnessed an enormous amount of development. Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu was not pushing for SCS for fear of being implicated in the Vote for Note Case, the MP alleged. Industries would automatically come to the State if the SCS was granted to it, he said. The MP alleged that Mr. Naidu was undermining democracy.