VIJAYAWADA: Former chief minister and YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy launched a blistering attack on Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday, accusing police lathi-charges and widespread detentions of Village and Ward Secretariat employees in Vijayawada. He characterised the police crackdown as ‘brutal’ and an ‘authoritarian assault on democracy.’
In a detailed social media statement posted on X, Jagan strongly questioned the government’s justification for using physical force, lathi-charging, and dragging women personnel onto streets when employees were attempting to voice their professional grievances through peaceful demonstrations.
He censured the administration for detaining protesting workers in police stations, blocking access to Dharna Chowk, and issuing blanket suspensions against Secretariat staff to suppress the agitation.
Jagan further alleged that Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu was systematically dismantling the Village and Ward Secretariat system—a decentralised administrative framework established during the previous YSRCP tenure to deliver 540 public services directly to households. He claimed that under the guise of rationalisation, the coalition government was attempting to eliminate nearly 30,000 permanent Secretariat jobs