Shocking end

ANDHRA PRADESH lost one of its most charismatic and resourceful leaders ever when Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was killed in a helicopter crash in Kurnool district on September 2.

Comparable even to N.T. Rama Rao, who enjoyed a larger-than-life image during his short political career, Rajasekhara Reddy was growing in stature and settling down to serve a second consecutive stint as Chief Minister when death intervened. He had almost single-handedly delivered 33 Lok Sabha members to the Congress and achieved the difficult feat of defeating the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in two consecutive elections.

His sudden departure has had a devastating effect on the States political landscape, which now looks barren. As barren as the land where his Bell-430 helicopter left a burnt patch amid the green foliage in the inhospitable Nallamala hill range. It has left the Congress party shell-shocked and groping for suitable or even a makeshift replacement for the 60-year-old Rajasekhara Reddy as Chief Minister.

A consummate politician, the doctor in Rajasekhara Reddy could gauge the peoples pulse as much as the leader in him could empathise with the poor and their problems. He loved to reach out to the masses, listen to their grievances and try to resolve them. It was his 1,500-km padayatra in the gruelling heat of the summer of 2003 that turned round the Congress fortunes and catapulted him into the Chief Ministers post.

It was this passion that drove him to plan a series of public contact programmes through Rachchabanda, or the village square, which is often the venue of exchange of information or banter. These were to be surprise visits, beginning from Anuppalle in Chittoor district, so that villagers were not tutored to say the right things. He was so excited over the programme that he ordered more than 1,000 helipads to be built across the State for his travel.

Rajasekhara Reddy has logged thousands of flying hours in helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft during the past five years as the Chief Minister. There were districts he had visited as many as 47 times in a year. Helicopters, at least the smaller ones, are never a comfortable mode of flying because of their thudding noise and vibrations, but YSR, as he was popularly known, seemed unfazed once he boarded a chopper. He would put on his earplugs, pick up a newspaper and doze off after some time.

The Bell-430, owned by the State government, was nearly 10 years old and a was a relic by VIP-use standards, though it was given a Certificate of Airworthiness by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) with validity up to 2010. After bidding goodbye to his aides, Rajasekhara Reddy boarded this helicopter at Begumpet airport at 8-35 a.m. along with his Special Secretary P. Subramanyam, a senior IAS officer, and Chief Security Officer A.S.C. Wesley.

Before they revved up the engines, the pilots, Group Captain S.K. Bhatia and Captain M.S. Reddy, were asked by their VIP occupant how long it would take to fly from Hyderabad to Chittoor. These were the last words of YSR anyone on the ground heard. The answer that the flight time was two hours and 10 minutes became irrelevant as the chopper crashed midway.

After receiving the green signal from the Air Traffic Control (ATC), the pilots took off and a few minutes later contacted the ATC at the Shamshabad International Airport. At around 9-02 a.m., contact was established with ATC, Chennai, and it was agreed that they would communicate again 30 minutes later.

At around 10-45 a.m., Bhaskar Sarma, personal secretary to the Chief Minister, tried to call up Wesley to enquire whether they had landed, but there was no response. Alarm bells began ringing and frantic calls were made to Chittoor, and soon there was panic when the realisation dawned that Rajasekhara Reddy may not return, at least not so soon.

Nearly a dozen helicopters, including those from the Indian Air Force (IAF) bases at Yelahanka and Hakimpet, and fixed-wing aircraft were scrambled to the Nallamala forests to search for the missing chopper. Reconnaissance of an area of nearly 300 square kilometres did not leave the authorities any wiser about the choppers location, while repeated calls to the four mobile phones carried by the Chief Ministers aides drew no response.

However, the mobile service provider and the IAF did some out-of-the-box thinking. An SMS (Short Messaging Service) message sent to the mobile phone of Wesley was delivered. This enabled a narrowing down of the search to a 4 sq km area. The identification of the base transceiver tower that last forwarded the message allowed the mapping of the precise coordinates of the crash site by using data collected by the search helicopters and obtained from the Bell-430s last contact with the ATC.

The IAF was requested to deploy three SU-30 MKI aircraft to map the vast area. A fleet of aircraft, including an Il-78 transport refuel tanker, joined the search, which was coordinated through an operation centre set up at Kurnool.

The next day two Chetak helicopters, after a two-hour search, spotted the wreckage at 8-20 a.m. on a burnt patch of forest. It was then only a matter of time before the magnitude of the tragedy would unfold. At 9-20 a.m., two police commandos from an MI 8 helicopter and another three from an Advanced Light Helicopter rappelled down to the crash site.

All the five bodies lay in a mangled state, evidence that the occupants met a gory end, while the helicopter lay completely smashed with only its tail partly intact. Soon, forces from the ground joined the operation and the bodies were winched up to the helicopters hovering above.

Theories abound about the cause of the accident but they are mostly in the realm of speculation. These range from a lightning strike to a naxalite attack. The real reasons will perhaps be known once the black box (cockpit voice recorder) is opened and examined by the special investigation team that has since taken possession of the equipment.

An understanding of the terrain will provide some idea of the probable reasons for the crash. The site is located on Nallamala Hill No. 339, known so because its peak is 339 metres above mean sea level. It falls under the Rudracodu forest beat of the Gundla Brahmeswaram (GBM) Wildlife Sanctuary and is not too far from where the Krishna river meanders through deep valleys. This means the pilot was flying at an altitude of 1,000-1,200 feet (300-400 m), a fact further confirmed by evidence from the SMS since the mobile phone cannot function beyond this height.

This hill, also called Pavurala gutta by the local tribal people, is so remote that the nearest human habitation lies 15 km away. It is not known why seasoned pilots like Group Captain Bhatia and Captain M.S. Reddy flew over this hill since it meant that they had taken a detour of nearly 18 km towards the east from the original flight plan. This also meant a disaster was waiting to happen.

Nallamala Hill 339 is a jagged hill but does not appear so from above because of the thick foliage. During the monsoon, the hillock attracts dark clouds. The assumption is that the helicopter, flying very low, could have run into the dark clouds and crashed into the hillock.

Interestingly, the crash site is close to the Rudrakoteswara temple, rarely visited by any devotee but known to be a safe haven for naxalites. The sanctuary itself is home to a variety of wild animals such as the tiger, the panther, the sloth bear and the python.

Once the bodies were recovered, they were taken to Hyderabad after the post-mortem was done at Kurnool. Within hours of the confirmation of YSRs death, his trusted lieutenant and Finance Minister Konijeti Rosaiah (76) was sworn in as Chief Minister by Governor N.D. Tiwari at a hurriedly organised ceremony at the Raj Bhavan. Any hope that this would be a long-term arrangement was put to rest by AICC general secretary M. Veerappa Moily when he declared that this was an interim arrangement until the Congress Legislature Party elected a new leader after the mourning period.

Running the party successfully post-YSR is indeed a challenge for the Congress high command, as finding a successor is no mean task. Far from being demoralised at being defeated for the second time running, TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu is emboldened by the doubling of his partys strength in the Assembly from 47 to 92 and the fall in the Congress tally from 185 to 156.

Serious rumblings have already begun within the party as the majority of MLAs and all the Ministers have plumped for anointing as Chief Minister YSRs son, 36-year-old Jagan Mohan Reddy, who is a Member of Parliament. It will require all the skills that the AICC leaders can muster to manage the difficult political situation and yet avoid repeating the mistakes of the past when it appointed four Chief Ministers during 1978-83 and three during 1989-94. In the Assembly elections that followed these developments, the Congress conceded power to N.T. Rama Rao on both occasions.