With the multi-thousand crore Visakhapatnam land encroachments issue gradually emerging as the biggest scam and turning out to be a noose around the ruling Telugu Desam Party, its president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has decided to follow the path shown by Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
In the Miyapur and other major land scams that surfaced in Telangana, KCR has just ignored the protests of the opposition parties for a CBI probe and ensured that the scam did not get much focus in the media.
At the same time, he sought to turn the tables on the Congress party which tried to make it a big issue, by leaking to the media that some of the Congress leaders, too, were involved in the illegal land registrations with the help of Goldstone Prasad, the main accused in the scam.
KCR deliberately leaked the names of former Congress leaders K Kesava Rao and D Srinivas, thereby creating an impression among the people that the opposition parties have no moral right to raise the issue and that the government was doing its best to save the lands.
This has given the cue to Naidu as well in dealing with the Visakhapatnam land scam. He got the news leaked to the media stating that those involved in illegal land grabbing include some YSR Congress party leaders as well.
He particularly got the name of Botsa Lakshmana Rao, brother of YSRC leader Botsa Satyanarayana, disclosed by the DGP along with documentary proof.
May be in the coming days, the names of more YSRC leaders involved in the land scam might surface.
Obviously, the move was to push the opposition party into the defensive mode, as it was getting ready for a Maha Dharna.
But the question is, if Naidu has the information that even YSRC leaders are involved, why can’t he order a CBI probe so that he can expose them more openly?
Well, the answer is obvious!
