Former Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy today alleged that the liquor scam was a cooked-up one to nullify and weaken the ongoing liquor case filed against chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu for irregularities done in his earlier tenure, between 2014 and 2019, for which he is currently on bail.

Claiming that there was no evidence or money trail of the alleged scam, Reddy alleged that the coalition government led by the TDP was being vindictive and harassing political opponents and officials in the name of investigating the alleged liquor scam.

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Referring to the Delhi Liquor scam against Arvind Kejriwal, Reddy claimed that his government had taken the opposite path.

“The government there (Delhi) shifted liquor deals from public to private sector, but what we did was just the opposite,” said the YSRCP supremo, denying there was any kickbacks following the changes made by his government in excise policy.

He claimed that the liquor policy formulated by his government did not benefit anybody.

“Where is the scope for any scam? Why would anybody give money?… in our case, the volumes (of liquor sales) came down, the profits had come down thanks to the taxes the state government imposed. There was a robust transparent process put in place versus what Chandrababu Naidu did during his regime (2014-19) when he actually brought in private shops to place indents on those he chose through his private shop mafia, wherein five distilleries benefited to the extent of  69 percent of the orders,” said Reddy who broke his silence for the first time after two officials who worked in the CMO during his tenure were arrested along with the director of Bharthi cements by the Special Investigation Team.

He said that according to his liquor policy, every bottle had a QR code and was scanned before being sold. So, it was automatically updated online, and based on that sale, further orders were placed. He wondered where was the money trail or documentary evidence of the scam. He said the files never came to CMO.

Reddy said the main accused in the liquor scam, Raj Kasireddy was TDP’s Vijayawada MP, Kesineni Sivanath’s business associate. “When this man was reluctant to give a false statement, they made him an accused,” he alleged. According to investigators, Kasireddy was Reddy’s IT advisor. He also slammed former YSRCP MP Vijayasai Reddy, who indicted Kasireddy of getting kickbacks for the party.

“If you want to take into cognizance a rogue MP’s statement who deserts his party, an MP who surrenders his term to benefit another party, if such a man’s statement you want to take into consideration, what is the credibility of such statements?” he said adding anybody can even name Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. He listed out the political opponents, activists and officials who were being harassed in the TDP regime and alleged there was an undeclared emergency in AP.