Former joint director of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) V V Lakshminarayana, popularly known as JD, often talks about value-based politics and decries caste-based politics.
In the initial days of entering politics, JD used to talk about overhauling political system. But the fact that he had joined the Jana Sena Party floated by power star Pawan Kalyan, clearly established that he is also caught in the web of caste politics.
He chose to contest from Visakhapatnam parliamentary constituency, only because of the Kapu vote bank in the port city and he thought Jana Sena, a Kapu-dominated party would help him win the seat.
Now, JD is said to be planning consolidate Kapus as a powerful pressure group with an objective of grabbing power in Andhra Pradesh in the next elections. According to reports, JD, along with a few other Kapu leaders, met at Hotel Daspalla in Hyderabad four days ago to discuss their future course of action.
Apart from JD, other Kapu leaders who attended the meeting were: Vangaveeti Radhakrishna from Vijayawada, Ganta Srinivasa Rao from Viskahapatnam, Kanna Lakshminarayana from Guntur, Thota Chandrasekhar from East Godavari, former Tamil Nadu chief secretary Rammohan Rao and other Kapu Sangham leaders like Areti Prakash, K V Rao and M H Rao.
Apparently, the Kapu leaders, instead of floating a new party for Kapus, have decided to work together as a pressure group and see that the community gets maximum number of seats from whichever party they belong to, so that a Kapu strongman will become the chief minister.
“Let us not follow the failed models of Praja Rajyam Party of Chiranjeevi and Jana Sena Party of Pawan Kalyan. But let us adopt a fool-proof strategy to ensure that Kapus would grab the power in the next elections,” JD is learnt to have told the gathering.
A four-member core committee headed by JD is learnt to have been formed to work out a future course of action. The core committee will meet in the first week of January to discuss a concrete action plan.
So, the politics has changed JD, rather than him changing the politics!
