The death of Pittala Kotaiah, a farmer of Kondaveedu in Guntur district in his own fields almost at the same time when Telugu Desam Party president and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu addressed a public rally in the village kicked up a major political storm in Andhra Pradesh.
While the ruling TDP tried hush up the death describing it as a suicide due to personal problems of the farmer, the opposition parties naturally tried to use the incident to run down the TDP government and take political mileage out of it.
But there is a clear difference between the stand taken by two major opposition parties – Jana Sena Party headed by actor Pawan Kalyan and YSR Congress party led by Y S Jaganmohan Reddy.
Pawan appeared to be too mild in his criticism of the government in the episode.
He gave a simple tweet saying that the government should not wash its hands of by giving some compensation to the family of the farmer but adopt more sympathetic approach.
“Farmers’ tears are not good for the country,” he said.
A team of Jana Sena leaders led by former MLA Ravela Kishore Babu which toured the village was also very soft towards the government.
It said the death of farmers appeared to be suspicious and hence, the government should order a judicial probe.It demanded that the government should provide a job to one of the sons of Kotaiah.
On the other hand, YSRC launched an aggressive attack on the Naidu government holding it responsible for Kotaiah’s death.
A fact-finding team of YSRC led by Ummareddy Venkateshwarlu said there was an undisputable evidence to say that the BC farmer was killed for refusing to allow his land to be used for creating a helipad for the landing of chief minister’s helicopter.
Ummareddy alleged that the police were trying to hush up the issue by distorting the facts to shield the main culprits.
He said Kotaiah’s land was taken over by the police for a government programme which was scheduled to be attended by Naidu.
He went on to allege that the highhandedness of police was the main reason for the suspicious death of the farmer.
“The farmer expressed his anguish to the village elders and told them that the police and TDP members were destroying his field and within one hour he died. While police maintain that he committed suicide by consuming pesticide, it cannot stand any scrutiny,” the YSRC leader said.
