Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s public criticism of Jana Sena Party MLA Bommidi Nayakar’s performance has evoked a strong political response from former Jana Sena leader and environmentalist Bolisetti Satyanarayana.
Bolisetti lashed out at Naidu over the manner in which he was assessing the performance of elected representatives.
Naidu had visited Mogaltur in the Narasapuram Assembly constituency on September 1 and participated in the Pedala Sevalo programme.
During the visit, the Chief Minister expressed dissatisfaction with the functioning of officials and the overall performance of the Narasapuram constituency represented by Jana Sena MLA Bommidi Nayakar.
Naidu said that while the overall performance of the district was satisfactory, the Narasapuram constituency was lagging behind on several parameters. He pointed out that out of 25 indicators, 23 were in the negative.
He described the situation as unacceptable and also directed officials to replace the nodal officer with a more active one.
Naidu stressed that the MLA should take responsibility for improving the situation and not merely bring problems to the Chief Minister’s attention.
Reacting to Naidu’s remarks, Bolisetti said that publicly questioning an MLA over his performance in front of the people was a good democratic practice. However, he questioned whether the same standard was being applied uniformly across the ruling alliance.
In a social media post, Bolisetti said the practice would have been even more appropriate if it had first been introduced in the constituency represented by Naidu’s brother-in-law and Hindupur MLA Nandamuri Balakrishna, or in the Denduluru constituency represented by Chintamaneni Prabhakar, whom he described as an MLA particularly close to Naidu.
Bolisetti said that questioning the performance of MLAs before the public would have real value only if the practice was applied equally to all legislators.
He argued that a uniform approach to evaluating the performance of all MLAs would ultimately benefit the ruling alliance.
