Telugu Desam Party (TDP) State president and Gajuwaka MLA Palla Srinivasa Rao on Tuesday, described former Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s visit to the families of fishermen who lost lives in the recent boat capsize incident off the Visakhapatnam coast, as the height of political hypocrisy.

Mr. Srinivasa Rao demanded that before attempting to extract political mileage out of human tragedies, the YSRCP chief must answer for the systematic destruction of the marine welfare ecosystem during his five-year tenure.

Addressing the media on Tuesday, Mr Palla Srinivasa Rao refuted Jagan Mohan Reddy’s statements over the government’s negligence in the incident, He stated that upon receiving information about the recent boat capsize, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu immediately mobilised the State Administration, the Indian Coast Guard, and the Indian Navy on a war footing.

The NDA government sanctioned and released ₹10 lakh each to six affected families within 72 hours of the incident, allocating ₹5 lakh from the Fisheries Department and an additional ₹5 lakh directly from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund (CMRF). The government has also pledged holistic socio-economic rehabilitation for the sole survivor, Kari Chinna.

The Gajuwaka MLA raised crucial questions regarding the timeline of the accident report, demanding an inquiry into how YSRCP leaders accessed detailed information, photographs, and Aadhaar cards of the victims on the very night of the incident before official channels were briefed. He questioned why these leaders chose to release data to media outlets for propaganda rather than immediately alerting the Gangavaram Port authorities to fast-track rescue operations. It was only after Laxman Rao, president of the boat operators’ association, formally notified the port management that structured search protocols were activated.

He noted that Mr. Jagan, who consistently turned a blind eye to the tears of the fishing community while in power has no moral authority to lecture the current administration on empathy or responsiveness.

Mr. Srinivasa Rao challenged Mr. Jagan to produce a transparent account of the compensation distributed under his administration. He revealed that despite tall promises of a ₹10 lakh ex-gratia for accidental deaths at sea, the previous YSRCP government kept 52 out of 116 initial claims pending for years under the convenient pretext of a ‘lack of budget’.

He also pointed out that the YSRCP government did not even distribute a single fishing net to marginalised community members. Instead, it weaponised regulatory measures like G.O. 217 to strip local cooperative societies of their traditional rights over tanks and reservoirs, leasing them out to party henchmen via rigged online auctions. This pushed thousands of self-reliant fishermen into forced migration and manual labour in their own villages. He also criticised the previous administration for withholding basic death certificates from grieving families, effectively blocking them from accessing legitimate insurance claims.