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Vizag steel plant anti-privatisation protest pits YSR Congress against TDP
TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu said Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy should take up the cause of thousands of workers of the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam.
The agitation by the workers of the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam and citizens and politicians against the Central government’s decision to privatise it has now become a catalyst in the latest battle between the major opposition Telugu Desam Party and ruling YSR Congress party.
TDP’s Visakhapatnam urban unit president Palla Srinivasa Rao, who has been on fast unto death since February 10 in protest against the privatisation, was forcibly shifted by the police to a private hospital on Tuesday morning, hours before TDP president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu arrived in the city to express solidarity with the protesting workers of the steel plant.
As the TDP leader’s fast evoked huge support from the steel plant workers and other opposition parties, the YSR Congress party announced a counter-agitation. Party general secretary and parliamentary party leader V Vijay Sai Reddy announced that he would take out a padayatra in the city on February 20 in protest against the privatisation of the steel plant.
Reddy said he would walk for 22 km from Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation office to the steel plant gate at Kurnmanna Palem to highlight the issues of steel plant workers.
He said he would take up the issue with the Centre and make all out efforts to see that the Visakhapatnam steel plant is not privatised.
YSR Congress party president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy will be visiting Visakhapatnam on Wednesday to interact with the steel plant workers and extend his support to their cause.
A YSRC leader familiar with the development said the chief minister was suspecting that the TDP was planning to create unrest in Visakhapatnam, at a time when the government was planning to shift the executive capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam.
Early Tuesday morning, the Visakhapatnam police swooped down on the TDP office where Srinivas was on hunger strike, bundled him into a van and took him to the Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences at Sheelanagar where he was admitted.
The TDP leader refused to take treatment and said he would continue with the fast on the hospital bed itself.
In the afternoon, TDP president Chandrababu Naidu called on Srinivas in the hospital and extended all support from the party. “It was unfortunate that not a single minister has bothered to call on the fasting TDP leader and enquired about his health till now,” he said.
Naidu demanded that the chief minister take the responsibility to lead the ongoing agitation for saving the prestigious Visakhapatnam Steel Plant from the threat of privatisation.
He said Jagan should stop enacting dramas on the steel plant issue and take up the cause of thousands of workers. He alleged that YSRC leader Vijay Sai Reddy was trying to counsel the people stating that they should accept the reality about the privatisation of the steel plant.
Describing the steel plant as the soul of Vizag, the TDP chief alleged that the YSRC leaders were hell bent on looting the 'soul' itself. “If Jagan has any love for Visakhapatnam, he should get the Obulapuram mines in Anantapur allotted for saving the Visakha Steel plant,” he said.
