Andhra CM Jagan leaves for 2-day visit to Delhi, to meet Amit Shah today

Andhra Pradesh chief minister and YSR Congress party president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday left for New Delhi on a two-day tour during which he is scheduled to meet various Union ministers.

The chief minister left for Delhi by a special flight around 11am. He was accompanied by state irrigation minister P Anil Kumar Yadav and senior officials.

He will meet Union home minister Amit Shah at around 9pm to discuss various issues pertaining to the state. He will also be meet Union water resources minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in the evening to present a progress report on the Polavaram irrigation project being constructed on Godavari river, and request for reimbursement of funds spent on the project.

The official note said the chief minister is expected to meet a few other Union ministers, including Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan, railway minister Piyush Goyal and environment minister Prakash Javadekar, before returning to Vijayawada on Friday afternoon.

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The last time Jagan went to New Delhi was on December 15, when he met Shah and requested the Centre’s support to shift the judicial capital of the state from Amaravati to Kurnool.

A YSRCP leader familiar with the development said apart from discussing the pending issues of the state, Jagan would also take up with Shah the recent controversy over the arrest of rebel Member of Parliament K Raghurama Krishnam Raju in a sedition case.

Raju, who got bail from the Supreme Court, has been staying put in New Delhi for the past 10 days. He has been writing to Central ministers, MPs, and even Governors and chief ministers of various states, accusing the Jagan government of misusing the sedition law.

He also alleged that he was tortured in custody by the Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department police for filing a petition in the CBI court seeking cancellation of Jagan’s bail in an alleged quid pro quo case of 2013 being probed by the agency.

Telugu Desam Party alleged that Jagan was meeting Shah as the bail cancellation petition was coming up before the CBI court on June 14. “The chief minister is using all his lobbying power with the Centre only to save himself from CBI and ED cases instead of securing any benefits to the state. This time, too, he has gone to Delhi only to get his cases waived, not to protect interests of the state,” TDP parliament member K Rammohan Naidu said in a statement.