YSR Congress party president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Wednesday said his party would contest bylections without fear if they were conducted in the wake of the acceptance of Lok Sabha Chairman Sumitra Mahajan the resignations of its MPs. Mr. Jagan, on padayatra in West Godavari district, told the media that his party would be really happy if the TDP would also contest the elections.
He said the YSR Congress would consider it a great fortune if the TDP candidates too contested because “they would not even get back their deposits”. Whether the TDP was interested in getting the Special Category Status (SCS) or not would then come out, Mr. Jagan said.
If all the 25 MPs resigned, the SCS would have become a national issue. But that did not happen and the State had lost out because of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s wrong stand.
Mr. Jagan said Mr. Naidu was afraid and stopped his MPs from resigning leading to this stalemate. The SCS would have been discussed by everyone in the country had all the MPs resigned, he said.
He said he was very disturbed because Mr. Naidu had not yet realised that he had made a big blunder that would cost the State dearly.
Mr. Naidu was still looking at the whole issue from an election point of view. He was more concerned about who would contest in the elections rather than the message it could send to the country, he said. This was evident in the question “who will contest these elections” in all the meetings, Mr. Jagan pointed out.