She is seen lying on a cot on the floor of the party’s Vijayawada office in a widely shared video. The sister of YSRCP leader and chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy, state Congress chief YS Sharmila Reddy, claimed on Thursday in a political standoff in Andhra Pradesh that she stayed at the Congress office to avoid the government’s purported attempt to house-arrest her. She is seen lying on a cot on the floor of the party’s Vijayawada office in a widely shared video. She had led Congress employees in the party’s Chalo Secretariat protest the day before.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday at Andhra Ratna Bhavan in Vijayawada, YS Sharmila claimed that in the previous five years, Jagan Mohan Reddy had completely failed to address significant issues pertaining to youth, the unemployed, and students.
There were attempts to place her under house arrest, as she later claimed on X. Will you attempt to place us under house arrest if we call for a protest on behalf of the working class? In a democracy, do we have the ability to protest? I have to stay a whole night in the Congress Party workplace after running from the police because I’m a woman. Is that not embarrassing? On X, she wrote.
She said on Thursday that she was surrounded by thousands of police officers. They surrounded us with thousands of police officers. We are being held captive, and iron fences have been erected. They are going to arrest us if we support the unemployed. You are attempting to thwart us as dictators. Your behavior is evidence of this. He said that YCP Sarkar ought to express regret to the jobless. Manickam Tagore, a Lok Sabha MP, charged Jagan Mohan Reddy with possessing an attitude he described as authoritarian.
Defying Jagan’s conceit and advocating for democracy, and condemning the unjust actions of Jagan’s police for suppressing democratic liberties toward advocates for the unemployed, I stand in solidarity with YS Sharmila and countless others. Manickam Tagore wrote on X, “It’s time to uphold the core values of democracy as well as the right to quiet protest.”
On January 4, YS Sharmila became a member of Congress. She rose to become the state chief of the party in a matter of weeks. Prior to that, on July 8, 2021, Sharmila had floated the YSR Telangana Party, which she was leading following an apparent falling out with her brother, YS Jagan Reddy. Following her ascension to the Andhra Pradesh Congress chief position, she charged Reddy with putting development on the back burner.
The number of crimes committed against Dalits has sharply increased. She had informed Congress employees that the sand mafia and mining industry are in charge. She had further stated that not even Jagan, who had protested to AP about the special category status, had bothered to start a movement against the Center for refusing the same.
