Jayalalithaa 'has insulted womankind'

Congress Legislature party leader and opposition leader in the Andhra Pradesh state assembly Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy yesterday slammed Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa for "insulting the entire womankind in India" by raking up the foreign origin of the Congress party president Sonia Gandhi.

Talking about the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi 30 years after she adopted everything Indian and made women in India proud was tantamount to insulting the women of this country, Reddy said in a statement from Kurnool.

Jayalalithaa was "resorting to cheap gimmicks to derive political, administrative and legal mileage", he said, adding her efforts to rake up the issue had only exposed the "total bankruptcy" of the Tamil Nadu chief minister.

Reddy, participating in a protest in Dhone town against the involvement of a minister in irregularities in the federal-sponsored Food-for-Work (FFW) programme, said Jayalalithaa conveniently forgot that she came back to power in Tamil Nadu with the support of the Congress party as well as her commitment made during the last election campaign to "totally" support Sonia Gandhi at the national level.

The Congress leader said also if she did not mend her ways, the people of Tamil Nadu would teach her a lesson as they did in 1996.