Kurnool: Finance Minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy slams Naidu, questions silence

Kurnool: Finance Minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy on Saturday wondered why former Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his son Lokesh failed to react on Income Tax raids on the former personal secretary of Naidu. The I-T officials covered 40 places too and found that Rs 2,000 crore was siphoned off.

Addressing a press conference here, Rajendranath Reddy came down heavily on the TDP leaders. He alleged P Srinivas,former personal secretary of Opposition Leader N Chandrababu Naidu, was the "kingpin" in the scam. Srinivas was working in the Chief Minister's office from 1995-2004 when Naidu was Chief Minister. Later, he joined the TDP and worked as personal secretary to Naidu since 2004-14, the Minister said. Elaborating onthe scam, he said the TDP leaders had set up shell companies were given sub-contracts by the larger companies whileexecuting government projects.

The leaders then created fake bills and drew the money from the exchequer and sent it to different countries through 'hawala, he said. The Finance Minister further alleged that the former government had brought money back into the State in the form of loans and gave money to their own companies through contracts and sub- contracts. He added that this has now become a burden on the people of the State. "These leaders are the ones who will give lectures about morality and integrity," he said. The Ministersaid Killari Rajesh, the TDP organising secretary, was a childhood friend of TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh, was also directly involved in the scam. "Some TDP leaders also expressed dissatisfaction when Rajesh was chosen to be the organising secretary of the party," he added. Rajandranath Reddy also mentioned the names of Prattipati Pulla Rao's son, Prattipati Sarath Kumar, and RK Infra that was allegedly involved in the scam.