The Andhra Pradesh police detained and held under house arrest several opposition leaders belonging to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left parties in the wake of Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s one-day visit to the temple town of Tirupati to take part in the Vidya Deevena welfare scheme disbursal programme.
The police action has been widely criticised with the opposition accusing the Chief Minister of being intolerant to criticism and of “stifling the opposition’s voice by misusing the police department”. Members of the opposition also said that Andhra Pradesh has become “a police state”.
Meanwhile, speaking to the media, Jagan Mohan Reddy held the opposition TDP responsible for the fiasco over the leaking of question papers in several subjects in the State’s ongoing SSC Class 10 board examinations.
Over 70 people, including 45 teachers, stand accused of taking photographs of question papers in several subjects within minutes of the respective examinations starting and then posting them on social media. The answers were messaged back to the teacher invigilators who then showed them to the students writing the examinations.
Said the Chief Minister: “The question papers were leaked from two schools belonging to former TDP minister P. Narayana and three Chaitanya schools. The question papers were later circulated by the same schools on WhatsApp. They (member of the TDP) are trying to tarnish the government’s image by resorting to such cheap tactics.”
The Chief Minister also held the TDP responsible for the rise in rape and molestation cases in the State, alleging that “all the three rape and molestation incidents reported at Guntur, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam districts recently had links to TDP leaders”. There have also been two incidents of rapes at Andhra Pradesh railway stations in two weeks.
But even while Jagan Mohan Reddy was raining fire and thunder against the opposition, his newly appointed Home Minister Taneti Vanitha was courting controversy with controversial and uncharitable comments on the recent incidents of rape in the State.
The Andhra Pradesh Home Minister’s choice of words, attributing “a psychological situation” and poverty for incidents of rape, even claiming the accused did not intend to rape has had the opposition accusing her of “insensitivity”.
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