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AP CM Naidu invites slain Kapu leader Vangaveeti Ranga’s son to join TDP
Radhakrishna, the son of former MLA and slain Kapu leader Vangaveeti Mohan Ranga, will join the Telugu Desam Party on January 25 after having resigned from YSRCP. Radha had resigned from the party after a tiff with party leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy over giving him a party ticket.
Radhakrishna, the son of former MLA and slain Kapu leader Vangaveeti Mohan Ranga, will join the Telugu Desam Party on January 25 after having resigned from the Yuvajana Sramkia Rytu Congress (YSRC). Radha had resigned from the party after a tiff with party leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy over giving him a party ticket.
On Wednesday, a team of TDP emissaries led by member of legislative council TD Janardhan had met Radha at his residence to convey Andhra chief minister and party chief N Chandrababu Naidu’s wish that Radha join the ruling party TDP.
Sources close to Radha said he will join the TDP in Naidu’s presence after launching a broadside against Jagan Reddy for allegedly humiliating him in the party.
Radha’s joining the TDP, which allegedly had a role in the killing of his fasting father on December 26, 1988, has raised the hackles of Ranga’s followers, with social media posts resenting his decision going viral. Radha’s mother Vangaveeti Ratnakumari apparently joined the TDP as a two-time lawmaker of united Andhra Pradesh Assembly and as a successor to her husband from Vijayawada East after Ranga’s murder.
Radha was elected to the assembly from Vijayawada East on a Praja Rajyam Party’s (PRP) ticket in 2009. He later joined the Congress along with his leader and mega star Chiranjeevi. He then shifted loyalties to the YSR Congress only to lose the election to his father’s one-time follower Malladi Vishnu in Vijayawada Central.
Radha left the YSR Congress as its leadership denied him the ticket for the same constituency which he had lost in the previous election.
With Radha quitting Jagan’s party, Naidu is understandably seeking to kill two birds with one shot — firing at his bête noir Jagan Reddy from Radha’s shoulder on one side and reaping maximum political dividends from the Kapu community by giving the former YSRC leader political asylum.
On Monday, the AP cabinet at a meeting presided by Naidu, resolved to allot a five per cent quota for Kapus within the 10 per cent quota for the economically backward sections (EBS) in an obvious attempt to keep Kapus in good humour. The Naidu government failed to realise its election promise of BC status for Kapus even after passing a bill in the state assembly as it failed to get the Centre’s approval.
Although Kapus are traditionally against the Kamma-dominant TDP, Naidu is obligated to please them by all means in order to ensure his party’s victory in elections as they constitute the third-largest community in the central coastal Andhra region after Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes. Chandrababu, because of this compulsions, demonstrated his largesse for the Kapus soon after coming to power in 2014 by giving the community a Deputy CM post and two plum cabinet berths. Besides, the TDP government also established a Kapu corporation headed by a representative from the community as its Chairman with a cabinet rank.
On Tuesday, TDP whip in the Assembly Meda Mallikarjun Reddy from Rajampeta in Rayalaseema’s Kadapa district deserted Naidu and embraced Jagan. Sources in the TDP said Radhakrishna is likely to be rehabilitated with an MLC post in return for his campaigning in six kapu-dominated coastal districts in its favour.
Galla Subramanyam, Kapu Nadu general secretary, talking to Hindustan Times, said Radha’s decision to join the TDP has pained scores of his father’s admirers and that there will be hardly anything for Naidu’s TDP to gain out of his admission.
Subramanyam wanted Radha to keep in mind the fact as to how TDP deceived his mother by denying her a ticket in the election in 1999. Film actor Kota Srinivasa Rao from the BJP was nominated in the Vijayawada East in alliance with the TDP then as a substitute for Ratnakumari.
