'Aam Aadmi Party Bug Bites Andhra Pradesh Leaders Too'

By Nayeem Shaikh | Hyderabad

The aam politician is on the rise. Driven by the spectacular electoral success of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi, quite a few persons in the state from politicians to bureaucrats to entrepreneurs are all set to launch political parties. They include TDP leader and entrepreneur Palem Srikanth Reddy, Maharashtra cadre IPS officer and former state CBI director V V Lakshminarayana, and a few others including Lok Satta president Jayaprakash Narayan, who is trying to make his party act as the local unit of Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP. 
    
Bitten by the AAP bug is Palem Srikanth Reddy, a Stanford University graduate, entrepreneur and TDP leader. While in the TDP, Srikanth Reddy has conducted several road shows for the youth in the supreme conviction that they are the vote bank and hold the key to any change in society.
“Ever since the superb show put up by the AAP in the Delhi assembly elections, there has been tremendous pressure on me from social workers and students to float a political party. I will be holding a final meeting with my supporters on January 8 and most likely announce the party plans and details on January 16-17,” he told SINN Live. 
    
50-year-old Srikanth Reddy is the son of retired chief justice P Chenna Kesava Reddy and is founder & chairman of Palred Technologies Limited (formerly called Four Soft Limited), a public listed IT company.He is also founder-president of the professionals cell of the TDP and contested from Kadapa in the 2009 Parliament elections against Y S Jaganmohan Reddy. 
    
“AP is in turmoil on the bifurcation as well as several other political issues. The people of the state have lost faith in the traditional parties and leaders. Even when new parties are floated, it is the same old leaders and families,” he said and promised to offer something new. The key players of Srikanth Reddy at this stage are Arun, a management consultant with IIT-IIM education, Jaideep an anthropologist turned social activist, Siva Krishna, a software consultant and a group of development workers from different parts of the state. While they are undecided about contesting limited seats or not contesting this election at all, the decision to offer an alternative to traditional parties in AP is more or less certain. The new political party is expected to be in place by Sankranti. ‘Youth have potential to change society’ 

In the case of Lakshminarayana, the top cop who handled several highprofile cases while in AP including the Satyam scam, Jagan assets, Emaar and illegal mining, the Maharashtra government could have unwittingly prodded him to float a political party by not giving him a posting ever since he completed his CBI deputation in AP and reported to the parent cadre in June last year. 
    
For the last few weeks, Lakshminarayana has associated himself with an NGO and addressed the youth in colleges, schools and clubs across the state including Vijayawada, Kakinada and Amalapuram. “In all his speeches, he called upon students to inculcate three noble principles --Sankalpam (resolve), saadhana (action) and Saphalyata (accomplishment) as stepping stones of success,” said an aide of the cop. 
    
Lakshminarayana has already met Kejriwal and actor Pavan Kalyan. “He met the AAP chief in Delhi last month and discussed the campaign of carrying forward the anticorruption message to every city, town and village in Andhra Pradesh. He also met Chiranjeevi’s brother and discussed the idea of launching a political party with anti-corruption as the objective,” said sources. 
    
However, the 1990 batch IPS officer has to first quit government service in order to take the political path. “Since he is yet to do it, his party, if in the pipeline, can take some time to take shape,” said sources. At this stage, it is not known whether he would charter an independent course or strike some sort of an alliance with the AAP. Asked about it, Lakshminarayana was non-committal on launching a political party. “I have been meeting students and youth as they alone have the potential to change the society. This is my campaign at present. I also know that people are discussing a lot about me,” Lakshminarayana told SINN Live on Saturday. 
    
Meanwhile, even as Lok Satta’s Jayaprakash Narayan is doing his best to have a tieup with AAP, Manda Krishna Madiga, who led the self-respect movement of dalits in Andhra Pradesh under the banner Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti (MRPS) in the early eighties, on Saturday announced a new political party, Mahajana Socialist Party (MSP). 
    
Announcing the party at a function organized by physically-challenged persons near Indira Park here, Manda Krishna Madiga said the party would fight against oppression of lower castes in various spheres of public life in Andhra Pradesh. The ultimate goal of the party is to achieve social justice to the poor, he said.