“I will file my nomination on Tuesday and not tour any villages further but will only appeal to people of Nagarjunasagar to vote for me through a pamphlet. Let people decide the mandate. Will the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and BJP do the same, will KCR accept my challenge?” senior Congress leader K. Jana Reddy asked at a public meeting here on Saturday.
In his address, at the ‘Nagarjunasagar Jana Garjana’, the seven-time winner, said voters should see the bypoll as a protest against Centre-State policies and promises, to end politics of turncoats and question governments.
He said the Nagarjunasagar ‘no-campaign’ challenge would become a role model for politics in the country by promoting healthy voting. Mr. Jana Reddy said he had done the same in the 1985 election and won it, and as a professor of healthy democracy he said voters of his constituency by electing leaders without any influence, would be as esteemed as Nagarjunasagar Project itself.
The Congress leader, mentioning that the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) had appointed an MLA to each mandal as election in-charges, quoted B. R. Ambedkar’s words on vote as a weapon and told the gathering not to become slaves.
Mr. Jana Reddy belittled the claims of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) ‘MLA-in-charges’ and went on to explain the role of Congress in the country for Independence and for separate Telangana.
At the constituency level, under his legislatorship, he said Nagarjunasagar had the longest Panchayati Raj roads, irrigation network and electrification achieved in the State.
Referring to TRS leaders, who questioned his development works in Nagarjunasagar, he said, “TRS government is like a midwife who helps at birth and later claims the baby as her own.”
Mr. Jana Reddy added that he was not aiming for higher echelons of power through the bypoll, but said his duty was to hand over a legacy of good democracy to younger generations.
TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and CLP leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said Jana Reddy’s victory was a historical need.
Bhongir MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and MLC Jeevan Reddy participated.