Anantapur MP JC threatens to quit

Anantapur: The turf war between Anantapur MP JC Diwakar Reddy and city MLA Vykuntham Prabhakar Chowdary within the ruling TDP on Thursday took a curious twist with the Reddy’s threat to quit his MP post. Reddy held out his resignation threat at a media conference here, depicting his intra-party rivals as villains of the piece.

He accused Chowdary without naming him of creating hurdles for his development plans in his Lok Sabha constituency. He said he will submit his resignation to the Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Monday.

Although he represented the Lok Sabha segment with 7 lakh-odd voters, he was not in a position to secure pension for a widow beneficiary and a house site to one of his voters, he said. What’s the fun of holding the MP post, he asked.

He listed out his “failures” which included aborted plans for the widening of Gandhi Bazar and Tilak road in Anantapur city, to keep his election promise of finding a lasting remedy for drinking water problem in his native Tadipatri Assembly segment by filling the Chagallu reservoir with the high-level canal (HLC) water, among others.

Demolition of houses that came up in Ananthasagaram tank adjacent to the city by the district administration against his wish appeared to have acted as the trigger for his resignation drama. According to information, over 150 houseless people in the city encroached upon the tank lands and built houses under the leadership of a city corporator Umamaheswara Rao, close follower of Diwakar Reddy.

When the MP was away in the UK, the houses were demolished by the official machinery and Diwakar Reddy suspected Chowdary’s hand behind the incident. As if adding salt to the Diwakar’s wounds, Umamaheswara Rao was reportedly assaulted by the group of Prabhakar Chowdary at a meeting of the standing council of Anantapuram Municipal Corporation a few days ago.

He drew the wrath from the rival group by raising his voice against the alleged discrimination in allotment of funds for development of divisions. The assault is understood to have led Diwakar Reddy to come to a conclusion that there is no protection for his group within the party.

In the game of power politics, he appeared to have used his resignation threat as a weapon to take the stride in his favour by turning heat on Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. Diwakar indicated his mood at the media conference to take back his resignation if the CM intervenes and set the things right.

“After all, my resignation is not meant to create problems but to find a solution. If remedy comes my way why should I quit my post,” he shot back. Diwakar Reddy in the past took up the intra-party feuds with the CM, seeking the latter’s intervention.

Diwakar Reddy defected to the TDP from the Congress in the run up to the 2014 general elections. Prabhakar Chowdary too switched to the TDP a little earlier from the PRP. Chowdary with over 10,000 votes in his kitty in the city is a force to reckon with. Keeping this in mind, Diwakar himself lobbied for Chowdary’s ticket for the local Assembly segment in 2014 to smoothen his victory in Parliament elections.