Pawan Kalyan suffers a jolt after former IPS officer quits Jana Sena Party

Two weeks after joining hands with the BJP, actor-politician Pawan Kalyan suffered a big jolt when a senior party colleague and former IPS officer V.V. Lakshminarayana resigned from Jana Sena Party (JSP) on Thursday (January 30).

Lakshminarayana, former joint director of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) who had probed several high-profile cases in the country, accused Pawan Kalyan of “deviating from his avowed path” and being “inconsistent in his policies and programmes.”

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“On several occasions in the past, you had stated that you will not get back to acting and that you will dedicate full time for politics. But, you have gone back on this and started acting in movies. This shows your inconsistency and fickle mindedness,” the former top cop said in his letter to the party chief.

Truck with BJP

Though Lakshminarayana cited Pawan Kalyan’s return to the films as the reason for his exit, he is believed to be upset over the regional party’s decision to forge an alliance with the BJP. The sources close to the former IPS officer said that he was not consulted by the party leadership before joining hands with the saffron party.

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Lakshminarayana, who had joined the JSP in March last year, unsuccessfully contested from Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha constituency in the April general elections. Pawan Kalyan himself had lost both the assembly seats he contested while his party managed to win just one seat in the 175-member assembly.

High-profile cases

Known for his honesty and uprightness, Lakshminarayana, a 1990 batch IPS officer, had sought voluntary retirement in 2018 and was actively involved with rural NGOs engaged in farmers’ issues before taking the political plunge.

He is a household name in Andhra Pradesh, largely because of the high-profile cases that he had handled including the alleged illegal assets case against Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy during 2011-12.

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As joint director of CBI, he had earned the image of a tough super cop determined to expose a powerful politician.

Lakshminarayana, who did his M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), was also at the helm of investigations into several high-profile cases including Satyam scandal, Obulapuram mining scam involving Bellary Brothers.rs a jolt, former top cop quits the party