YSRCP Will Maintain Friendly Relations With Neighbors, No Expansion Plans In Telangana

Answering questions, the Party General Secretary said that YSRCP has no intention of expanding to other States, and Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has categorically stated that the Party will confine to Andhra Pradesh and will maintain cordial relations with the neighbors. The decision of meeting leaders from Telangana is that of YS Sharmila alone and we have no intentions of backseat driving or such exercise as is being propagated.

Yes, there was a discussion in the Party, on the expansion issue for three months and YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has said that he would not leave the State, in the larger interests of the people. There are many issues between the two States which need to be resolved on the Government to Government basis and this would not be possible if we expand the Party to the neighboring State.

There is no need for us to run the Party from behind the scenes and our leader has made it very clear that the Party will stick to Andhra Pradesh and maintain good relations with Telangana in the better interests of the State. Though the Party has won on a landslide in the 2019 elections, our leader has confined only to the State without showing any national aspirations. In 2014 as well our Party has won a 6 percent vote share in Telangana but our leader is firm on confining to Andhra Pradesh.

YS Sharmila might have thought differently and she wanted to explore the political options in Telangana, going by what she said today. It is not necessary that members of the same family should think alike and they can have contrasting views on the issue of Party expansion, but it is not true that there is a wedge between the brother and sister and differences in the family. There is a talk that YS Bharathi has political ambitions that are doing its rounds in social media.

YS Sharmila is a leader in her own right and is well known to the people as the sister of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and she comes from the political family of Dr. YS Rajasekhar Reddy, who has a mass following.  We did try to convince her but the decision was her own.

Our Party has emerged out of very different and difficult situations, after the sudden death of Dr. YS Rajasekhar Reddy with a groundswell of people extending support to the newly formed Party with one MP and one MLA and later YS Sharmila undertaking padayatra in Telangana and with people’s support all, though we have come to the position we are now in, he said.