Alleging that YSR Congress Party chief Y S Jaganmohan Reddy's mercenaries were on a mission to kill him, Andhra Pradesh Marketing Minister Adinarayana Reddy said that Jagan alone would be held responsible if anything happened to him.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday, Reddy said that Jagan had developed a grudge against him as he had defeated Jagan's uncle Y S Vivekananda Reddy in the MLC elections.
The minister has been in the eye of a storm after he said on Independence Day that dalits remained backward since they did not focus on education, and that they did not place emphasis on personal hygiene. He also seems to have said that reservations should not continue since it has been several decades now since they were extended, and there was no improvement in the lot of the dalits despite them mainly because the dalits themselves were refusing to work hard.
Several dalit organizations organized protests and burned his effigies since. And the YSR Congress has seized upon the opportunity to attack both him and the mothership, the TDP. Adinarayana Reddy now says that the YSR Congress is twisting his comments, and perhaps trying to change the discourse and generate sympathy by claiming threats to his life.
"I had said that diseases would be there if dalits fail to remain clean. I am living in a dalitwada and there are primarily dalits living around my residence. Everyone knows about it in Kadapa. People won't believe it if Jagan spreads lies about me," he said.
He also said that Jagan's party would become a desert after the Nandyal by-election as people were extending their support to TDP.
filed in:Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, Dalits, Cleanliness