Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has spoken up for Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, the two Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) leaders sent to five days of judicial custody for entering the now-de-notified Jantar Mantar protest site and allegedly waving the Tricolour there. It is his first public comment on the nationwide protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.

His post on X late on Wednesday (October 14, 2026) brought a sharp reply from the BJP in Andhra Pradesh. BJP leader and Andhra Pradesh Health Minister Satya Kumar Yadav said people had been wrongly imprisoned for speaking against Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy when he was Chief Minister.

Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy wrote: “A proactive approach always yields better results than a reactive stance. The system has a flaw that needs to be corrected. Trust in the electoral process must be restored. The arrests of Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka do not solve anything; it only aggravates the situation.” He said he empathised with the two.

CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke thanked Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy for “speaking out against the illegal arrest of Ashu and Saurav”.

Vijay Mallangi, who leads the outfit in the south, called the post “a big and bold statement”. The CJP says the two were sent to custody for unfurling the national flag. Mr. Mallangi had earlier thanked BRS leader K.T. Rama Rao for speaking up for them.

Some users replying to Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s post have resurfaced a February 2023 thread by Mr. Das. In it Mr. Das wrote critically about an Enforcement Directorate (ED) case involving Bharathi Cement, a company in which, he said, Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s family holds a 49% stake.

Mr. Satya Kumar Yadav replied on the same platform. “I was wondering when you would jump into this, because all the other losers were already involved,” he wrote.

He asked which electoral process the YSRCP president meant. “The 2019 Assembly elections, in which you won 151 seats, and the Lok Sabha elections, in which you won 22 seats? Remember, the Central Govt and the Election Commission were the same at that time. So, when you win, everything is fine, but when you lose, the electoral process suddenly becomes bad?” he wrote.

It was ironic, he said, that Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy was speaking against the detention of people who had violated bail conditions and disrespected the judiciary when, under his rule, people were wrongly imprisoned just for speaking against him. “Do you want me to make a list of those victims?” he asked.

BJP State president P.V.N. Madhav, in a post in Telugu, said the CJP claimed to fight corruption but had joined hands with Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy, who faces Enforcement Directorate and CBI cases. He accused the YSRCP government of religious intolerance and of suppressing the Opposition. “The people of Andhra Pradesh have not forgotten the challenges faced by the opposition, the suppression of political freedom, the hardships endured by the public, and the rampant corruption that characterised the YSRCP’s rule. While peaceful protest is a democratic right, there is no place in a democracy for violence, stone-pelting, attacks on police personnel, misconduct toward women, or assaults on security staff. It is highly irresponsible for a former Chief Minister to distort the actions of law enforcement, who are merely upholding the law, to serve his own political interests,” he said.

The YSRCP’s official X handle posted: “In a democracy, transparency must not only prevail. It must be seen to prevail!” The post tagged the Chief Electoral Officer of Andhra Pradesh and the Election Commission.