2019 saw the election of Ramakrishna Raju, a YSRCP MP and the leader of a power infrastructure development firm. His encounters with the Andhra CM of the time started shortly after.
The former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and leader of the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), Jagan Mohan Reddy, is facing charges of attempted murder in a case brought about by Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MLA Kanumuru Raghu Ramakrishna Raju.
Raju, a former MP for the YSRCP from Narasapuram, had a history of falling out with Jagan even when he was still in his party. In April, right before the state elections, Raju joined the TDP. Raju claimed in his lawsuit that he was unlawfully detained by Andhra Pradesh CID officials in Hyderabad in 2021 on charges of sedition and that they failed to appear in person before a Hyderabad municipal court to secure a transit arrest order. Raju said that Jagan ordered the cops to beat him. A month after Raju asked a CBI special court in Hyderabad to revoke Jagan’s bail in a case involving disproportionate assets, the man was arrested.
Raju has already had encounters with Jagan. He was always at odds with the YSRCP during his tenure there. It began many months after Raju, the head of the Ind Barath Group, a firm that develops electricity infrastructure, was elected to the Lok Sabha. He charged Jagan of being “autocratic” and impeding the ability of the party’s lawmakers to operate during a news conference. Additionally, he said that Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy, a top party leader and counselor to Jagan, was inciting people against him. Raju therefore received strong criticism from YSRCP members and workers.
In that same year, Jagan’s intention to switch all Telugu-medium government schools to English prompted the now-TDP MLA to strike out once more. He attacked the Jagan administration for accepting “only cash” at liquor outlets and said that the YSRCP government’s social programs were rife with corruption. The YSRCP wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in July 2020, demanding Raju’s disqualification due to his persistent assaults.
When Raju was arrested in the sedition case in May 2021, everything reached a breaking point. “Promoting enmity between communities through hate speeches” was the charge made against him. A month after Raju informed the CBI special court that Jagan had broken his bail terms in the matter of disproportionate assets and could have influenced witnesses, Jagan was arrested.
Raju sent a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April of 2023. accused Jagan of “violating the Constitution” and “promoting Christianity.” “Hindu temples are being constructively destroyed in Andhra Pradesh. To solve the difficulties, a Dharmik or Hindu commission should be established, similar to that of a Christian or Muslim minority. We are being treated as a minority even though we are the majority,” he wrote.
Raju said that the obligation for non-Hindus to register their identity had been waived by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) board. “They are altering the long-standing regulations for the benefit of a single person. He wrote, “Only the Karma Yogi, our esteemed Prime Minister, shall attend to this matter.”
“As the time has come for all of us to face the public probity and mandate, it will free both of us from this unsavoury association once and for all,” said Raju in a February resignation letter from the YSRCP. “Despite your hostility and malicious brutal acts to physically eliminate me,” he said, “I have equally made laudable, positive, and even more powerful efforts working for my constituency and its holistic development as well as its constituents at Narsapuram.”
He became a member of the TDP in February and defeated P V L Narasimha Raju of the YSRCP by 56,777 votes to win the Undi Assembly seat in the West Godavari district.
