YSR’s New Year gift to Chandrababu

Y S Rajasekhara Reddy knows how to keep his trusted lieutenants in good humour. Close on the heels of bestowing coveted posts to Manda Jagannatham, Swaranjit Sen and a few others, the chief minister gifted a New Year bonanza to former Chittoor Congress legislator C K Jayachandra Reddy alias C K Babu, who is facing charges in a murder case.

On December 31 night, the Congress government issued a GO appointing C K Babu as chairman of Rayalaseema Development Board (RDB) — equivalent to cabinet rank.

Sources said the chief minister is also learnt to have assured Babu that he would be given the party ticket in the 2009 assembly elections.

CK, who is considered to be one of the disciplined soldiers in the Rajasekhara Reddy’s camp, escaped from the jaws of death twice in the recent times - on December 31, 2007 and during Ganga jatara in the middle of 2008. In fact, CK Babu has escaped bid on his life nine times!

CK’s ride in Chittoor district politics has always been controversial, as he has enemies not only in the rival parties but within the Congress party as well. The list includes TTD chairman D K Adikeshavulu Naidu and MLC Gopinath from the Congress. “CK could not digest his rival DK coming back to the Congress fold after resigning from the TDP,” an insider close to him said.

CK, who was facing charges for his role in the murder of the son of a TDP leader, was denied Congress ticket in 2004 and later suspended from the party. He entered the fray from Chittoor as an independent but lost the election by a narrow margin. But, to CK’s credit, he was the only Congress leader to win when the TDP made a clean sweep in 14 other constituencies in the 1994 elections.