KAKINADA: In an unusually sharp attack on Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan, YSRC president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday questioned the actor’s character, wondering “what values does he have when he changes his life partner every four years like a car.”
His outburst came at the fag end of a press conference he held at Samalkot in East Godavari district but the stinging remarks assume significance, coming as they did on a day when the Tollywood star embarked on a tour of the Godavari districts, home to the numerically strong Kapu community to which he himself belongs.
Replying to a query, Jagan sarcastically remarked, “it is our Karma that we have to listen to a person like Pawan Kalyan” and went on to mock him. “He talks of values. What values does he have? He changes his life partner every four-five years like a car. If some other person does the same, he would be branded ‘Nitya Pelliokoduku’ (always a bridegroom)... if you or I do it, we would be jailed.
Is it not polygamy?,” he questioned and further accused Pawan of being in cohorts with the BJP and the TDP for the last four years. “He claims to have realised his mistake and wants us to believe he is a changed man. How can that be? It is like three people (BJP, Pawan and TDP) stabbing the State and the latter two claiming innocence. Six months before elections, he comes out and admits his mistake,” said the YSRC chief. Jagan also alleged that Pawan used to pop up once in a while in the last four years only to protect CM Naidu.
The YSRC leader’s comments also put paid to speculation in some quarters about a possible tie-up between him and Pawan for the 2019 polls and also appeared intended to undermine the actor within the Kapu community.
Earlier, Jagan called the bandh observed by his party a success and held Naidu responsible for the death of a party activist Kaki Durga Rao of Krishnapuram in West Godavari while in police custody at Jangareddygudem. “The incident shows the lack of sincerity of Chandrababu Naidu government on SCS and other assurances given during the division of the state. Durga Rao suffered cardiac arrest when he was in the custody of the police and was declared dead when he was shifted to Jangareddygudem town government hospital,” he said and alleged that the government had hatched conspiracy to foil the bandh and used police for the same. The bandh was a success despite the oppressive measures, he said and thanked all those who participated voluntarily in the bandh.
To queries, he recalled that it was he who had kept the SCS issue alive when Naidu and BJP sought to bury it and pointed at his Yuva Bheri meetings wherein all promises made by BJP and TDP were played repeatedly to drive home the point long before the TDP began doing the same to corner Prime Minister Narendra Modi.