Chief Minister K Rosaiah, Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu and Praja Rajyam chief Chiranjeevi were among the top leaders who paid homage to late Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy on Friday night. Speaking on the occasion, Rosaiah said, "Reddy had a unique personality. He always kept his word and his leadership qualities made people admire him. No surprise that he never lost an election in his long political career since 1978."
The state government has also set up a two-member expert committee to investigate the crash, Home Minister Savita Reddy informed media persons in Hyderabad.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi paid glowing tributes to the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in Hyderabad on Friday.
The manufacturer of Bell helicopters has offered its assistance to authorities in probing the crash of the Bell-430 chopper which claimed the lives of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajashekhar Reddy and four others.
Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel said he would be ordering an inquiry into the tragic accident, and added that notwithstanding the inclement weather, it was the pilot's duty to determine a flight could be taken or not.
Rediff.com goes back in time and lists some public figures who met with a tragic end.
As the massive search operation to locate Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, who went missing over Nallamalla forest in Kurnool district, resumed on Thursday morning, some new information has forced the authorities to consider the possibility of the helicopter crashing in Srisailam reservoir. Some local fishermen have alerted the authorities that they have spotted the presence of oil in the backwaters of Srisailam reservoir on river Krishna in the area.
The massive search operation, to locate the missing helicopter of Andhra Pradesh Chief MinisterY S Rajasekhara Reddy, resumed at 6 am on Thursday morning, with three special aircraft and five helicopters. Atmakur, a small town in the Nallamalla forest area, has become the nerve centre of the operation as hundreds of personnel from various forces, including the state police and paramilitary, reached the place to comb the forest area.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy was embarking upon another major public contact program of "Rachabanda" (Village square) to have a better understanding of the situation at the grass root level when his helicopter went missing on Wednesday.
With a Sukhoi fighter aircraft, a special air craft from Indian Space Research Organization and another low flying aircraft of the state government completing a comprehensive aerial survey of Nallamalla forest area to find missing Andhra Pradesh CM Y S Rajashekhara Reddy's helicopter on Wednesday night and gathering crucial data including the photographs, focus of the search operation on Thursday will move to the ground.
She met with Defence Minister A K Antony, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, her political secretary Ahmed Patel and others on Wednesday evening to take stock of the situation.
The first images clicked by the manned aircraft of the Indian Space Research Organisation, sent earlier on Wednesday to find traces of the missing Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Y S Rajashekhar Reddy in the Nallamalla forests, have been received and are being analysed by the National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad, according to sources in ISRO.
The Andhra Pradesh Civil Aviation Corporation, which manages the two government-owned helicopters, has ruled out the possibility of the Bell 430 helicopter carrying state Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy having crashed.
Congress MP Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who has been critical of the party leadership and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K Rosaiah, tonight tried to justify his decision to undertake his yatra saying it was necessary for consoling the families of those who died following the demise of his father.
The state government allotted 50 acres of land near Visakhapatnam to Satyam Computer in December 2008 at a concessional rate of Rs 10 lakh.
In a big setback to the chief ministerial ambitions of YS Jaganmohan Reddy, the Congress high command has decided to ignore his claim over a ticket for the by-elections to the Pulivendula Assembly constituency which fell vacant due after his father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy's death. Instead, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has decided to field YSR's widow and Jagan's mother Vijayalakshmi as Congress candidate in Pulivendula, where by election will be held on December 19.
Botsa Satyanaryana was the last state Congress president of undivided Andhra Pradesh. Last week he was suspended from the party for 'anti-party' activities.
Creating a stir in the political circles, the film star-turned-politician and member of Lok Sabha of Telangana Rashtra Samiti, Vijayshanti, on Friday met the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
A total of 946 medals have been announced by the Union home ministry for personnel and officers of Central Armed Police Forces and state police forces, out of which three have been decorated with the President's Police Medal for Gallantry (PPMG) while 177 have been awarded the PMG.
In the eye of a storm ever since he defied the high command, Congress MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy on Tuesday claimed the party has given the "go-ahead" to him to continue with his tour of Telangana region and that all issues have been sorted out.
A defiant Congress Member of Parliament Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who set out on a tour to Warangal district, was taken into custody on Friday and was made to return to the city after one person was killed in violence that erupted due to opposition to his visit by pro-Telangana agitators.
Jagan's public statement is being seen as an indication that Sonia Gandhi had managed to settle the issue of Andhra Pradesh leadership in her hour-long discussion with Jagan and Rosaiah will remain in his post while Jagan will be given some other responsibility.
The power struggle in Andhra Pradesh Congress party continuing since the sudden death of Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy is fast heading towards its climax as there are indications that the party's central leadership will invite YSR's son and a claimant of CM's gaddi Jaganmohan Reddy to Delhi to strike out a compromise formula.
The flyover was built over a period of about three years at a cost of Rs 600 crore.
The helicopter, which crashed last September claiming the life of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and four others, was "probably not airworthy", but this was not a contributing factor to the accident, an inquiry has found.
The helicopter crash, which claimed the life of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S R Reddy, was caused by pilots' error who lost the chopper's control and were engrossed for vital six minutes trying to locate a flight manual, the probe report said on Wednesday.
Unlike his predecessor Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, who took a tough line against separate Telangana, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K Rosaiah has no personal view on the bifurcation of his state and would like the Centre to find a lasting solution not a "temporary truce".
As the situation was limping back to normalcy in Andhra Pradesh a day after unprecedented violence and attacks on the offices and retail outlets of both the rival Reliance groups, the state government booked a criminal case against a Telugu news channel TV5 for carrying an unverified report linking the names of Mukesh and Anil Ambani to the alleged foul play behind the death of former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash in September last year.
In the backdrop of Mumbai terror attacks and intelligence inputs about possible strikes, security will be beefed up for Republic Day celebrations in Delhi with 20,000 gun-toting policemen being stationed across the city ahead of the national event.
Delhi police on Monday chose to remain tight-lipped on the issue of the escape of three Pakistani terrorists from the capital, saying probe into the incident had begun and only the Central government could clarify which agency was responsible for it.
Eleven of the 33 party MPs from Andhra Pradesh met Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is expected to go to Hyderabad sometime later for resolving the issue, and put up their case that late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy's son should be given the top job in the state.
'Vital clues' have been collected by the high-powered committee of Directorate General of Civil Aviation, from the helicopter crash site in the dense Nallamalla forest range in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday, official sources said.Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and four others were killed when their helicopter crashed in Nallamalla forest area on September 2.The five-member DGCA expert team is led by R K Tyagi.
The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday said it will take over on Thursday the investigations into the helicopter crash that killed former chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
The Andhra Pradesh government has stressed that all the mandatory maintenance work and checks were carried out on the Bell-430 helicopter before it took off for its last journey on September 2 and crashed killing the state Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and four others.
The pilots of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy's ill-fated Bell 430 helicopter had tried to contact the Air Traffic Control, Chennai, at least twice and had desperately called for guidance, as they had lost their route. The revelations can put the ATC Chennai in dock for negligence leading to the fatal crash.
'There is no doubt he is with the Lord in heaven. He loved people and people poured their love on him. It was the people's love that got him elected as chief minister for a second term.'
The autopsy reports of former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and four others killed in the chopper crash will be handed over to CB (CID) and Directorate of Civil Aviation probing the mishap.
Following is the statement issued by late Andhra Pradesh Chief minister's son YS Jaganmohan Reddy on Sunday, urging his supporters to immediately stop their campaign projecting him as the successor
Globally, there were 73 accidents as of November 30 compared to 109 a year ago. "If you were to fly once per day, it would take 4,807 years for an individual to be involved in an accident," IATA's senior vice president (safety) Gunther Matschnigg told PTI in Geneva.
The power struggle in Andhra Pradesh Congress after the death of Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy took an ugly turn on Sunday when the supporters of YSR's son Jaganmohan Reddy disrupted the party's condolence meeting.
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