In 2010, a "humiliated" YS Jagan Mohan Reddy walked out of the Congress over Rajasekhara Reddy's legacy with full support of mother Vijayamma and sister YS Sharmila.
The YSR family and the Congress connect. (South First)
Former Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy’s daughter YS Sharmila joining the Congress has once again brought to focus her family’s rift with the more-than-a-century-old party, and her brother Jagan Mohan Reddy’s subsequent parting ways with the political formation.
In an open resignation letter addressed to the then-AICC president Sonia Gandhi on 29 November 2010, Jagan, now the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, listed the reasons for his quitting the party.
It ranged from humiliation meted out to him and his family, a bid to tarnish the image of his late father YSR, attempts to create a rift within his family, conspiracy to oust him from the party, and attacks on his media organisation, Sakshi.
After resigning from the Congress, he floated the Yuvajana Shramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) in March 2011. Though his party did not fare as expected in the 2014 elections — the first after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh — he rode to power with a thumping majority in 2019.
In doing so, he pushed the Congress far behind, and Andhra Pradesh became a bipolar political landscape, with the TDP emerging as the main Opposition party.
All these while Jagan’s mother YS Vijayalakshmi — popularly known as Vijayamma — and sister YS Sharmila stood by him, before the latter left him and shifted her focus on Telangana. With Sharmila in the Congress, the grand old party is now looking for a revival in Andhra Pradesh.
South First looks at the reasons for the YSR family’s, especially Jagan’s, bitterness towards the Congress, that led to the rise of the YSRCP in Andhra Pradesh.
YSR, a Gandhi loyalist, was a valuable leader for the Congress in Andhra Pradesh. Reporters who had attended government programmes launched by Sonia Gandhi and YSR, remember him following her with utmost discipline.
Despite playing a crucial role in winning parliamentary seats, YSR never appeared arrogant. Andhra Pradesh contributed 29 Lok Sabha seats in 2004 and 33 in 2009, significant numbers that helped the Congress gain and retain power at the Centre.
YSR gained popularity through his welfare schemes and irrigation projects in drought-hit areas across the state, establishing the image of a mass leader in just five years.
However, with the chopper crash that killed YSR on 2 September 2009, the picture changed. Jagan, who had been overseeing the family’s business interests, entered active politics.
Sonia Gandhi writing her condolence message on the demise of the former chief minister of united Andhra Pradesh, late YSR, in Hyderabad. (Wikimedia)
Even before YSR was laid to rest, the late leader’s followers started campaigning for Jagan as the chief minister. As the campaign intensified, the interim chief minister Konijeti Rosaiah clarified that he would go with the high command’s wishes.
The then-chief whip and now the Deputy Chief Minister of Telangana, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, even moved a resolution asking to make Jagan the chief minister within 100 days. A group of loyalists even met the then-governor ND Tiwari and requested him to invite Jagan to become the chief minister.
A group of YSR loyalists, including KVP Rama Chandra Rao, YSR’s college friend and advisor, and others such as the then-agriculture minister Raghuveera Reddy, were instrumental in garnering the support of around 150 out of the 157 MLAs to position YS Jagan as YSR’s successor.
This move didn’t go well with Sonia Gandhi. In a deft move, the Congress high command compelled Jagan to nominate Rosaiah as the chief minister at the Congress Legislative Party meeting. Thirty-seven-year-old Jagan obliged. On 3 September 2009, 77-year-old Rosaiah was sworn in as the chief minister.
All these developments put Jagan in a bad light in Delhi. His loyalists had even questioned the Gandhis’ succession in power.
Jagan, now the Kadapa MP, took out his promised Odarpu Yatra (condolence tour), defying the high command diktat. The stated purpose was to console the families, whose members had either died of suicide or cardiac arrest upon learning about YSR’s sudden demise.
Rosaiah, as per the high command’s orders, opposed the yatra and told the media that “he (Jagan) is a young boy with a lot of future. He needs proper advice. He can dream, aspire, and try for the chief minister’s post, but there is a method to try and get it.”
Jagan was not willing to take the advice. “Rosaiah reportedly said that I am in a hurry to become the chief minister. I am asking you, am I here to console or to ask for the chief minister’s post? I have come here to console. I do not understand why there is worry about the chief minister’s post. I think we should be ashamed of this politics,” he retorted.
YS Jagan in his Odarpu Yatra. (Supplied)
Earlier, Jagan had sought Sonia Gandhi’s permission for the yatra. He waited for six months before embarking on the journey. He met around 600 families at a snail’s pace, driven by slogans projecting him as the successor to YSR.
The shared sorrow of the bereaved families and Jagan became the foundation of his support base.
The young man’s rebellion did not impress the Gandhis. The high command threatened those supporting him with dire consequences.
Meanwhile, the Reddys’ influence in the party was growing along with the demand for a separate Telangana state, and it culminated in Rosaiah’s resignation.
The Reddys have traditionally been with the Congress, and with YSR becoming the chief minister twice, their clout had significantly increased. Rosaiah, a loyalist, hailed from the Vaisya community.
Kiran Kumar Reddy replaced Rosaiah on 25 November 2010. Jagan supported his nomination though all were then aware that he was no longer interested in the Congress.
A week before the swearing-in, on 19 November 2010, Jagan’s Sakshi television channel telecast a special program called Hastagatam, critical of the Congress and its leadership. The on-screen titles posed questions about corruption charges plaguing the UPA government.
A few days after Kiran Kumar Reddy’s swearing-in, Jagan resigned from the Congress and the Lok Sabha. His mother, Vijayamma, who was representing Pulivendula in the state Assembly, also followed suit.
In the letter to Sonia Gandhi, YS Jagan alleged a malicious campaign against his family and father who brought the Congress twice to power. He even raised doubts about his father’s sudden demise with the Congress-led Union government not answering the doubts properly. He termed the probe into the chopper crash a mere eyewash.
His resignation letter also pointed out how his mother, sister, and himself had to wait for a month for an appointment with Sonia Gandhi, while some others were given an audience within 24 hours. He also accused the Congress of “luring” his uncle YS Vivekananda Reddy to Delhi to create “fissures” in the family.
On 7 December 2010, Jagan announced his plan to float a new political party. He launched the YSRCP in March 2011, setting off a race to claim YSR’s legacy.
YS Jagan was arrested by the CBI in May 2012. (Supplied)
The legacy, however, remained with YSR’s immediate family when Jagan won the by-poll from Kadapa, and Vijayamma defeated her brother-in-law Vivekananda Reddy in Pulivendula.
In August 2011, based on a petition filed by P Shankar Rao, the state textile minister, and Kinjarapu Yerran Naidu, a former TDP MP and a close aide of TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ordered a CBI investigation against Jagan for alleged embezzlement.
On 27 May 2012, the CBI arrested Jagan for allegedly amassing wealth and assets through illegal means by misusing his father’s office.
However, many senior Congress leaders were surprised to see YSR’s name in the FIR along with Jagan and 12 others. It resulted in the resignation of 24 Congress and two TDP MLAs.
Jagan’s arrest kickstarted Sharmila’s career in active politics. With her mother Vijayamma’s backing, she began handling party affairs. The message she conveyed was always one: “The victimisation of YS Rajasekhara Reddy’s family by the Congress”.
Though Sharmila had campaigned for her father in his pocket borough Pulivendula, she largely remained in YSR’s shadow until his demise. However, she began attending large political rallies and delivering speeches only after her brother, Jagan, was arrested.
“The arrest was made only to satisfy the ego of one woman (Sonia Gandhi). When she could think of her son Rahul Gandhi becoming the PM, where would they be leading my family? The arrest was only to prevent Jagan from earning popularity through the Odarpu Yatra,” Vijayamma then told the media.
She even questioned why Sonia Gandhi and the late Rajiv Gandhi did not face a probe since they, too, were charged with corruption.
On 18 October 2012, Sharmila took her major but firm step into Andhra politics, when she embarked on a more than 3,000 km arduous padayatra — or walkathon — across the state. Her yatra, Maro Praja Prasthanam (Another People’s March), drew its name from her father’s iconic 2003 Praja Prasthanam padayatra, which infused a new life in the state Congress.
The 64-day yatra had made YSR the popular Congress leader in Andhra Pradesh, and it ensured him the Chief Minister’s Office in 2004. He repeated his win for the Congress in the 2009 Assembly elections also.
YS Sharmila with Jagan’s wife YS Bharathi during the padayatra.
Sharmila walked for nine months across 116 constituencies in 14 districts, covering 3,112 km, creating political momentum in the state, and keeping the YSRCP’s relevance alive. People then coined a slogan to describe her, “YS Sharmila is an arrow released by her brother — YS Jagan”. All her speeches were directed against the Congress and the TDP for conspiring to unjustly imprison her brother.
“To make vindictive political gains, laws and institutions are being used against one person,” she repeated. “It’s a part to tarnish the image of my father YSR. The Congress and the TDP lack the courage to face YS Jagan and hence are resorting to dirty politics. But people will punish them. Jagan will reinstate YSR’s rule soon,” she asserted.
Congress leader and then a Rajya Sabha member, V Hanumantha Rao, tried to stop the Sharmila juggernaut bulldozing across Andhra Pradesh. “Is the arrow released by Jagan a corrupt one? Or is that arrow the result of the ill-gotten wealth of Jagan,” he asked.
“Or else the arrow is the symbol of looted public money which is stashed away in banks? Sharmila should explain it to the people of the state,” The New Indian Express quoted Rao in October 2012.
While with Telangana agitations were gaining strength, Jagan went on a hunger strike in the jail against the bifurcation move.
Meanwhile, Sharmila moved on, consoling 310 families, whose dear ones had died of shock on learning about YSR’s death, across Telangana in 56 days during her Odarpu Yatra, which concluded in January 2016.
Jagan walked out of jail after 16 months. Psephologists predicted a win for the YSRCP in 2014 in the now-bifurcated Andhra Pradesh. But Chandrababu Naidu and his TDP proved them wrong by winning 102 out of 175 seats.
Undeterred, Jagan started a padayatra on 6 November 2017. His Praja Sankalpa Padayatra concluded in January 2019.
Three years later, Sharmila became the YSRCP’s star campaigner in Andhra Pradesh. She toured the entire state, raising the ‘Bye-Bye Babu’ slogan. Vijayamma accompanied her children and even addressed a few public meetings.
The YSR family’s endeavours paid off when the YSRCP won 151 out of the 175 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Jagan became the chief minister.
Within a year, the siblings fell out of each other. Sharmila was reportedly not accommodated in the party for which she had worked for a decade. Issues related to asset sharing fuelled the rivalry between them.
She left the party and shifted her focus to Telangana. Two years later, on her father’s birth anniversary, 8 July 2021, she launched the YSRTP, and embarked on a padayatra across Telangana, leaving Andhra Pradesh’s political landscape to her brother. Vijayamma later resigned from the YSRCP and joined her.
Sharmila soon found herself at loggerheads with the then-chief minister and BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao, with whom her brother has cordial relations. Incidentally, when Sharmila joined the Congress in Delhi on Thursday, 4 January, Jagan was visiting Rao, recuperating after hip surgery.
Jagan has never spoken in public about his sister’s political venture in the neighbouring state. It has reportedly disappointed Sharmila, who had walked miles to see him win.
YS Sharmila launches YSRTP, along with her mother YS Vijayamma. (Supplied)
Additionally, Sharmila was also the CBI’s secret witness in the Vivekananda Reddy murder case. She told the agency that political manoeuvring to ensure YSRCP’s Kadapa Lok Sabha ticket to her cousin YS Avinash Reddy had led to the murder of her uncle on 15 March 2019, during the thick of election campaigning.
In a few news conferences, she openly supported Vivekananda’s daughter, Suneetha Narreddy, who accused Avinash of conspiring to murder him out of fear of losing the Kadapa ticket to her father.
Jagan, meanwhile, backed Avinash in the Assembly, dismissing the TDP’s allegations and asked how one could murder a family member.
With the Congress emerging as the major force against the BRS in Telangana, Sharmila expressed interest in joining the Telangana unit. However, the state Congress unit suggested she work in Andhra rather than in Telangana.
The Congress in Telangana feared she might fuel Andhra vs Telangana sentiments if she worked in that state, which would go in favour of the BRS.
So far, Jagan and Sharmila have not spoken publicly against each other, However, the Congress’s insistence on reviving the party in Andhra Pradesh is setting the stage for a potential direct contest between the two — and the resumption of the race to claim YSR’s legacy.
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