Paying rent not quid pro quo says Lokesh, denies benefitting Lingamaneni in IRR alignment scam

AMARAVATI: Telugu Desam Party (TDP) general secretary Nara Lokesh made it clear that he has no role in the alleged Amaravati Inner Ring Road (IRR) scam and said that paying rent to Lingamaneni guest house can not be considered a quid pro quo.

Lokesh, after facing a six-hour-long grilling by the CID at their Kunchanpalli office on Wednesday, spoke to media. “They asked me the same questions again and again, like clothes that rotate in a washing machine. In all they asked 47 questions,” he said.

“The Investigation Officer (IO) showed me the tax returns of my mother Bhuvaneswari. I asked him where he got it,” Lokesh said. “They showed me the Rs 27 lakhs that we paid to Lingamaneni guest house as rent in 2019 as mentioned in the IT Returns,” Lokesh said and wondered when paying rent became a quid pro quo transaction.

“Quid pro quo is when someone pays Rs 350 per share for a share with a face value of Rs 10 in the case of Sakshi TV,” he said. He pointed out that the CID, to stop him from continuing with his “Yuvagalam” walkathon, was just wasting his time.

Lokesh said that during the question the CID showed a ‘Bahubali’ movie of the Amaravati capital area in which they showed him the nine acres that Heritage Foods purchased in the capital area of Amaravati. “For the first time I saw that actually the IRR was going through the Heritage land, contrary to what the IRR case claims,” Lokesh observed.

He said that the CID was trying to implicate him in the IRR scam issue even though there was no IRR on the ground in the first place. “The CID said that they found my name in the Group of Ministers formed clear 99 plots in the CRDA layout through a court order,” Lokesh said.

Answering a question on the ongoing legal battle regarding the skill scam, Lokesh said that the CID had failed to prove that a single rupee was deposited in the account of any one of his family members.

“The YS Jagan Mohan Reddy Government is taking revenge by incarcerating a 73-year-old leader. My mother and wife Brahmani visited him the other day during Mulaqat at the Central prison and they say that my father is not feeling well and that he was not given A-class facilities as assured by the Government before the ACB court,” Lokesh said.

“Two Reddy officers, Premchandra Reddy and Ajaya Kallam Reddy were conspicuously missing from the charge sheet, the Chief Minister who framed the skill development policy has been framed and jailed,” Lokesh pointed out.