Campaign for making YSR's son chief minister

Within hours of the official confirmation on Thursday that chief minister Y S RajasekharaReddy had indeed died in a helicopter crashin the forests of Kurnool district a day earlier, a public clamour and a silent campaign has begun for making YSR’s son and Kadapa Congress MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy the next CM of the state.

While several senior leaders including a Rajya Sabha member are said to be carrying out the silent campaign, several MPs, MLAs, party leaders and workers who had assembled at the Secretariat, the CM’s camp office and Gandhi Bhavan (state Congress headquarters) publicly demanded that Jagan be made CM.

At the CM’s camp office, which houses the YSR residence and where his body was expected to arrive later in the day, at least 22 Congress MPs told reporters that they wanted Jagan to be the next CM and that they would submit a memorandum to this effect to the Congress high command. The MPs included Lagadapati Rajagopal, Anjan Kumar Yadav, G Sukhender Reddy, Suresh Sheckar, Nandi Yellaiah, Sarve Satyanarayana, P Prabhakar and L Rajaiah.

Congress workers, who had pitched up tents at various major intersections of the city, held up portraits of YSR and shouted slogans in favour of Jagan as CM. Sources told TOI that a silent campaign is also on within a section of the party to ensure that Jagan succeeds his father.

Thirty-six-old Jagan is a first time MP and is only a little over 100 days old in politics. The sources said the group that is campaigning for Jagan as CM is doing so because it wants the status quo to continue, by which they can ensure that their interests are not destabilized with the death of YSR.

But analysts were aghast at the campaign. "How shameless can they be? YSR's body has not arrived in Hyderabad and these selfish fellows are lobbying for YSR's son so that their interests are not affected," a political analyst said.