Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Monday said he had nothing to do with the arrest of TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu and that he had no vengeance against him.
Reddy claimed that the Central probe agencies - the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Income Tax Department - had probed the allegations against former chief minister Naidu and subsequently made arrests, and said the IT department had also served notices on him (the TDP chief) "Nobody arrested Chandrababu Naidu due to vengeance. I don't have any vengeance against Naidu. I have nothing to do with the arrest. It (arrest) was made when I was not in India," he said at a meeting of YSRCP leaders.
Further, Reddy said Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself had made corruption allegations against Naidu and that he was in the opposition at that time.
He said Naidu barred the CBI, ED and IT department from entering the state when he was the CM.
Despite all this, the Chief Minister said some media houses and a section of people were demanding that Naidu should neither be probed nor arrested.
Currently, Naidu is under judicial remand in the Rajamahendravaram central prison for allegedly misappropriating funds from the Skill Development Corporation, which resulted in a purported loss of over Rs 300 crore to the state exchequer.
Addressing the YSRCP leaders, Reddy announced a bus yatra and other programmes in the coming months in the lead-up to the Assembly elections in the state.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)