YS Vivekananda Reddy, who was a minister in Andhra Pradesh and also an MP, passed away following a cardiac arrest. Twitteratti expressed condolences
Hyderabad: Former Andhra Pradesh minister and ex-MP YS Vivekananda Reddy passed away on Friday due to a cardiac arrest at his residence in Kadapa district. He was 68.
Reddy was busy campaigning for the YSRCP in the past few days. He was the brother of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister late YS Rajasekhar Reddy. He was also the uncle of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Sources said that talks were ongoing for a ticket for Reddy and his loss comes as a big blow to the party.
Reddy had studied agriculture from SV Agricultural College in Tirupati.
He was born in 1950 and was an MLA, MLC and MP. This apart from holding several positions in the Congress for decades.
He was first elected as an MLA in the year 1989 and then in 1994 from Pulivendula constituency.
The constituency is a bastion of the YSR family and Jagan currently holds the seat. Reddy became an MP for two consecutive terms from Kadapa in 1999 and 2004.
Jagan stepped into active politics in 2009 and Reddy sacrificed his Kadapa MP ticket for Jagan, who went on to hold the seat till 2014.
The YSRCP was formed in 2011 by Jagan following the death of his father Rajasekhar in a helicopter crash. Reddy remained in the Congress and even served as the agriculture minister during the tenure of chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy in the last Cabinet of united Andhra Pradesh.
In the 2011 by-elections, Reddy had contested against his own sister-in-law YS Vijayamma for the Pulivendula MLA seat, but was defeated.
In the same by-polls, Jagan emerged as a strong leader in the state after defeating DL Ravindra Reddy from the Congress with a huge majority to become the Kadapa MP. Following this, Reddy joined the YSRCP ahead of the 2014 elections.
News of Reddy’s death spread like wildfire. People who had interacted with him as well as his former colleagues remembered him as a “humble leader” who was always available to the people in Pulivendula.
Twitter too was filled with condolence messages.
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