As Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party’s under-construction central office in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur district was demolished on Saturday, party chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy accused the newly-elected Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu of “vendetta politics”.
Reddy alleged that the Naidu-led National Democratic Alliance government in the state "ignored the Andhra Pradesh High Court’s direction on Friday that had halted the demolition activity.
The site of the demolished structure is located on the route from Naidu’s house to the Telugu Desam party office, reported The New Indian Express.
After demolishing the building on Saturday morning, the Mangalagiri Tadepalli Municipal Corporation officials put up barriers to prevent anyone from entering the site.
The YSR Congress Party had moved the High Court on Friday against the preliminary actions of the Capital Region Development Authority.
The court’s orders were conveyed to the Capital Region Development Authority’s commissioner by a party lawyer, but the authority still demolished the structure, the YSR Congress Party alleged.
“Chandrababu [Naidu] took vendetta politics to the next level,” the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh said in a social media post. “Like a dictator, he got YSRCP’s central office demolished with excavators and bulldozers.”
According to state authorities the party office was being built on land belonging to the irrigation department, reported The New Indian Express. When Reddy was in power in the state from 2019 until earlier this month, the government allocated the land that was previously used as a boat yard, for the party office, at a low-cost lease, the newspaper reported.
On June 12, Naidu was sworn in as the new chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. On June 4, Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party along with its allies the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Jana Sena Party won the Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections.
The Telugu Desam Party won 135 out of the state’s 175 Assembly seats. The Jana Sena Party won 21 seats and the BJP clinched eight. Reddy’s YSR Congress Party won 11 seats.
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