Ex-YSRCP leader V Vijaya Sai Reddy launches new party in AP, attacks Jagan’s ‘arrogance’

Former YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) leader V Vijaya Sai Reddy on Wednesday launched the Parivarthana Rajaneethi Party (PRP), positioning the new regional political outfit as an alternative to the YSR Congress and the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP).The former Rajya Sabha MP unveiled his new political party at a convention centre in Vijayawada at 11.11 am, saying he chose the date and time on astrologers’ advice.

Unveiling a saffron-and-white flag with a traditional Dharma Chakra wheel at its centre, Sai Reddy said his party’s slogan would be “For the nation, for the dharma.”A chartered accountant by training, Sai Reddy was a close associate of then chief minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy, who died in a chopper crash in September 2009. Sai Reddy was among those who stood by his mentor’s son, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, when he left the Congress and founded the YSR Congress in 2010.Sai Reddy was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2016, got a second term in 2023, and was the YSR Congress’s parliamentary party leader until January 2025, when he resigned from the Rajya Sabha and left the party after differences with Jagan.The former MP launched a sharp attack on the YSRCP, pointing to its sharp decline from 151 seats in the 175-member assembly in 2019 to just 11 seats in the 2024 elections.“Although people had welcomed several welfare schemes implemented during the YSRCP government, they had rejected the arrogance and overbearing attitude of its top leadership through their votes,” he said.Sai Reddy said the YSR Congress leadership’s unwillingness to tolerate criticism and questions contributed to the party’s decline.“A political leader should remain among the people, interact with them, listen to their problems and respect the opinions of party workers.

Instead, the YSRCP leadership has allegedly erected barriers between itself and the public, creating a situation in which people could no longer approach their elected representatives,” Sai Reddy said.He also appealed to the YSRCP workers to leave their party and join the new political formation. “The doors of the Parivarthana Rajaneethi Party would always remain open to those committed to public service,” he said, declaring that Gen Z would be given two of every three candidates in the 2029 assembly elections.

Also, half of PRP candidates would be women.Sai Reddy asserted that the new party would not accommodate arrogance or an authoritarian political culture. Instead, party workers would be given prominence and treated as the organisation’s real leaders.He said the party would challenge the dominance of the two major political parties, controlled by two political families. It would make people’s aspirations its primary political agenda and focus on bringing about a fundamental change in the state’s political system.He promised free electricity, free education for students and 100 per cent employment and livelihood opportunities for the youth.He also said the party would work to raise the income levels of middle-class families and fulfil the aspirations of people whose expectations had gone unfulfilled for the past 80 years.