Amaravati: The vandalism of temples is an act by people with extreme ideology and who want to eke out political gains by creating such unrest, said Government Advisor (Public Affairs) Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, he said that the temples were being vandalized according to a plan with clear political interests. Neither Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy nor YSRCP would gain anything from such incidents and they do no good to the government but will make things worse. In such a scenario, it is obvious as to who is going to gain from these attacks. Either it has to be opposition TDP leaders, who are desperately trying to find their position in State or BJP, which has religion in their political agenda he said and appealed to distance politics from religion.

YSRCP, even while in Opposition, has never made any irresponsible allegations on religion or held any such protests that could disturb sensitive issues like religion. “Religion is purely personal and everyone should have respect towards other religions. The government has the responsibility to respect and protect the religious shrines,” he said.

Chandrababu Naidu had no such respect towards God or religion and thus never took off his shoes while offering prayers. He said that Chandrababu Naidu was responsible for the death of 29 people during Godavari Pushkaralu and even demolished temples in Vijayawada city, while the Endowments Minister was associated with BJP earlier. Naidu tried to handover Sadavarti lands to his close associates and never showed any respect for god in his 14 years of ruling, he said.

Would the Chief Minister like to get publicity on a noble cause of distributing 31 lakh house sites to the poor or get publicity by encouraging the desecration of temples, he asked and assured that the culprits behind these attacks would be severely punished as the State government has been taking enough measures to control these incidents and nab the accused. He requested the seers to cooperate with the government and give suggestions.

Meanwhile, speaking at a separate press conference, Minister for Animal Husbandry Seediri Appalaraju said that the TDP Politburo meeting is only to plan such heinous attacks on temples and create uncertainty across the State by disturbing the religious harmony. He questioned why Chandrababu Naidu took Jai Sriram slogan, who indeed has never taken the name of Ram in the last three decades. He said that Naidu will commit any sort of crime for the sake of politics and thus he came running to Ramatheertham after arresting a TDP person for involvement in the temple attack. Naidu will be soon going to jail in cash for the vote case and will remain as a blot in the history of Andhra Pradesh for committing such crimes