YSRCP district offices receive notices questioning legitimacy of their construction

Amaravati: Close on the heels of the demolition of the under construction YSRCP central office at Tadepalli in Andhra Pradesh recently, several district offices of the party have started receiving notices from civic bodies, questioning the legitimacy of their construction.

The opposition party shared a notice it received in the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday about the legitimacy of its Vizianagaram district office from the local civic body.

"You are hereby directed to stop the unauthorized construction work and submit a reply to this notice within seven days from the date of receipt of this notice in writing by you/your authorised agent," said the notice.

In the event of no reply, the Vizianagaram Municipal Corporation warned that "it will be treated as a continuous and intentional offence and further action will be taken as per provisions laid down under Section 452 (1) and 461 (1) of APMC Act, 1955".

Similar notices were also served to other district YSRCP offices.

Meanwhile, the opposition party alleged that the NDA government, comprising TDP, BJP and Janasena is intentionally targeting its offices.

"A plot has been hatched to demolish Vijayawada and Vizianagaram party offices in a vengeful manner. Sparing TDP offices which were built on the basis of a GO (order) issued by (chief minister N) Chandrababu (Naidu), the alliance government is coercing officials to serve notices to YSRCP," said the opposition party in a post on 'X'.

On Sunday, IT & Electronics Minister Nara Lokesh lambasted former CM Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy for allegedly allocating 42 acres of land in 26 districts at Rs 1000 lease for building YSRCP party offices.

Meanwhile, a government source shared a dataset to PTI on Tuesday, alleging that 18 of these offices were "totally unauthorised buildings", which are at various stages of construction.

According to the source, four district offices-- at Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, Machilipatnam and Kurnool received online approval but there were shortfalls. Yet, YSRCP "went ahead and built them".

While the Prakasam district office was built with permission, it noted that construction of three district offices -- in ASR, Konaseema and Chittoor are yet to commence and their sites are vacant now.

Almost all these district offices are expensive construction, featuring rich designs, impressive columns, colonnades, tiled roofs, arches and others. Along with land and construction cost, the ruling party pegged their value at around Rs 2,000 crore.

YSRCP offices controversy erupted in the aftermath of the Rs 500-crore Rushikonda palatial mansion uproar.

The sea-view mansion in Visakhapatnam, built with ultra luxury amenities such as Italian marble, 200 chandeliers, 12 bedrooms, multi-hued illumination and others was purportedly meant to be the residence of the former CM.

However, the recent transition of the state government from the YSRCP to TDP brought the mansion into national spotlight, and remained an unfulfilled dream of the previous government.

Meanwhile, Lokesh said, "What is this craze for palaces? Is there no end to your greed," apparently referring to Jagan Mohan Reddy.

Further, the source shared another dataset on the alleged security arrangements deployed by the former CM at his residences in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

It said 934 security personnel were deployed at Reddy's Tadepalli residence alone, which also functioned as his camp office.

Likewise, nine security personnel were deployed at his Lotus Pond residence in Hyderabad, 33 at Idupulupaya residence in Kadapa district and 10 at Pulivendula residence.

In total, 986 security personnel manned Reddy's four residences.