By making a hue and cry over the shifting of natural gas allocated to Andhra Pradesh to Maharashtra, Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has hit two birds at one shot: blaming it on late Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and stonewalling the prospects of union petroleum minister S Jaipal Reddy’s chances to succeed him as the Chief Minister.
In fact, the news about diversion of natural gas from Andhra Pradesh quota to fertilizer plant and power plant at Dabhol in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra at the behest of home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde was said to have been leaked to the media from the CMO sources. Naturally, the opposition parties raised a lot of noise and the ruling Congress leaders, too, started accusing Jaipal Reddy of ignoring the state’s interests. Despite the clarification from Jaipal Reddy that the decision was taken by the empowered committee in 2008 itself and that he had no role in it, there were no takers for his argument. Naturally, he had to take all the blame.
This is a severe setback to Jaipal Reddy at a time when the Congress high command was reportedly trying to convince him to replace Kiran Kumar Reddy as the CM. Now, there would be definitely criticism as to how a person in the union cabinet who could not protect the interests of the state could be made the chief minister.
Secondly, with Jaipal himself claiming that the decision was taken in 2008 and that the state government was aware of the decision, Kiran and PCC president Botsa Satyanarayana got a chance to blame late YSR for keeping silent when the gas being diverted from AP to Maharashtra.
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