Andhra Pradesh: Court rejects plea for Naidu’s house custody

Vijayawada: The ACB court on Tuesday rejected the petition seeking house custody for former Andhra Pradesh CM and TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, who was arrested in a corruption case in Nandyal on Saturday.

Naidu’s advocate Sidharth Luthra expressed serious concern over the safety of Chandrababu Naidu in the Rajahmundry Central Prison in view of the threat from Maoists and pleaded to consider his age and health condition.

Additional Advocate-General Ponnavolu Sudhakar Reddy told the court that the Rajahmundry prison was safer than his house and the entire Sneha Block of the prison was allocated to Chandrababu Naidu. Besides, he also said that special security arrangements were made, including CCTV cameras and armed guards. After hearing both sides, ACB judge Hima Bindu finally announced her judgement rejecting the plea for house custody.

Meanwhile, Naidu’s wife Bhuvaneswari, son Lokesh and daughter-in-law Brahmani met Naidu in the jail. Later Bhuvaneswari, speaking to the media, expressed concern over the security of Naidu.

She turned emotional saying that she did not find the kind of facilities that the government was claiming. Naidu was not even getting hot water to take bath, she added.

Amidst this scenario, political speculations are rife that Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy would go to New Delhi soon to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and express his desire to dissolve the Assembly by the end of September so that AP can go to polls along with Telangana in November. If he gets nod from the Centre, Jagan would hold a brief Assembly session and pass a resolution dissolving the Assembly.

On the contrary, the BRS leadership in Telangana feels that the Centre may impose Presidents’ rule in all poll-bound states, including Andhra Pradesh, and go in for joint polls of the Assembly and Lok Sabha in April.

Analysts say that the YSRCP feels that if the Assembly elections are held in November, the TDP will not have enough time to recover from the shock it got following the arrest of its national president N Chandrababu Naidu.

The party leaders would be busy in legal process and will not have any time for poll campaign or even to finalise the candidates.