Amaravati, Dec 27 (IANS) YSR Congress Party leader and former IAS officer Mohammed Imtiaz on Friday bid goodbye to politics.
Imtiaz, who had taken voluntary retirement from service to join the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), announced that he was quitting politics due to personal reasons.
On the invitation of then ruling party YSRCP, Imtiaz had taken voluntary retirement and joined the party in February this year.
YSRCP President and then Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy had picked Imtiaz as the party candidate from the Kurnool constituency in Assembly elections held in May, denying renomination to sitting MLA Hafeez Khan. The former bureaucrat, however, lost to Telugu Desam Party’s T. G. Bharath by a margin of 18,876 votes.
As the YSRCP lost power, Imtiaz apparently saw no future for himself in the party and decided to quit.
Several leaders including three Rajya Sabha members have quit the YSRCP since the TDP-Jana Sena-BJP alliance stormed to power with a landslide victory in the May 13 elections. The alliance bagged 164 out of 175 Assembly seats and it also won 21 out of 25 Lok Sabha seats.
The YSRCP, which had come to power in 2019 by winning 151 Assembly seats, could win only 11 seats. The party managed to win only four out of 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Mopidevi Venkatramna, B. Mastan Rao, and R. Krishnaiah resigned from their Rajya Sabha membership and also the YSRCP in September. Venkatramna and Mastan Rao joined the TDP, which recently nominated Mastan Rao to Rajya Sabha. The BJP sent Krishnaiah once again to the upper house of the Parliament.
Former minister Avanthi Srinivas resigned from the YSRCP on December 12. He resigned both as YSRCP in-charge for the Bheemili Assembly constituency and from the primary membership of the party.
In his resignation letter to YSRCP President Jagan Mohan Reddy and party’s North Andhra coordinator Vijayasai Reddy, Srinivas mentioned that he would like to distance himself from politics for personal reasons.
–IANS
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