It is now pretty evident that the Congress party is going for a kill by tightening its noose around YSR Congress party president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy from all sides. And it has no option but to target Jagan if it has to survive in Andhra Pradesh.
And Jagan, too, is hitting back at the Congress strongly, which is very much essential to establish his supremacy.
Riding on the sympathy for his father among the people due to his untimely death, the inability of the Congress party to provide an effective alternative to YSR and his enormous money power, Jagan is able to send jitters to the Congress as well as the Telugu Desam Party. Nobody would find fault with Jagan’s political ambitions and his attack on his political rivals to ride to power. And there is also no surprise if he comes to power in the next elections and he deserves it like any other politician.
But what is causing concern to independent political observers is Jagan’s audacity to attack institutions like the Central Bureau of Investigation and even judiciary in an attempt to project himself as a paragon of virtue and describe his rivals as anti-democratic and vindictive. The way his party has misinterpreted former CBI director Joginder Singh’s observation on the CBI functioning is a classic example of Jagan’s alarming thought process.
What Joginder said was that the CBI functions at the behest of the Union Home Ministry and its approach varies from case to case. There is nothing new in what he said, as everybody knows the CBI is an autonomous body and it is part of the union home ministry. The CBI director and other officials have not come from out of the blue; they are regular IPS officers appointed by the government and hence they are government servants. So, the CBI officers have to invariably listen to the home ministry, whichever party is in power. In the state government, too, the law and order machinery or the Anti-Corruption Bureau works under the home ministry.
Just because they are working as per the directives of the government, it may not be appropriate to attribute motives to the CBI or the state police. If that is the case, everybody can suspect the functioning of these institutions. What is worse, the Jagan party is of the view that since a former CBI director is a TDP leader, he is influencing the present CBI. Why then these agencies? The Jagan party can as well demand the scrapping of the CBI and the ACB, if it feels that the officials are working at the behest of Chidambaram or Chandrababu Naidu.
Fortunately, there is judiciary to take care of the victims of CBI or ACB if they are really innocent and are subject to harassment by these agencies. The victims can always approach courts for justice. Unfortunately, Jagan party does not seem to have faith even in judiciary. We have seen the party leaders attributing motives to several judges and even asking the Supreme Court to shift the case against Chandrababu Naidu to another state high court because they had no faith in the Andhra high court. So why courts? The Jagan party can as well demand scrapping of courts in AP, because it is suspecting that the judges are favouring the Congress or Chandrababu Naidu.
The bottom line of the entire argument is that in the present-day politics, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy is the only true, sincere and non-corrupt leader with a lot of integrity and values. And all the other persons and institutions that work against him deserve to be thrown into the dustbin. Only then can democracy prevail in the country!
