The current Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy, was – like so many other successful politicians in today’s India, such as Maharashtra’s Uddhav Thackeray – born into a political dynasty. His father, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, also served as Chief Minister.

His success speaks to the power of wealth and privilege, and to the disregard for serious corruption that has become so prevalent in India. The fact that he is a convicted criminal who has served a sixteen month prison sentence did not prevent him from leading his party to victory and while he currently has over thirty criminal cases against him, he simply shrugs them off.

Jaganmohan Reddy, born in 1972, began his political career in 2004, and was first elected as a member of parliament for Congress five years later. A disagreement with the Congress party leadership prompted him to form his own party, the YSRCP (Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party), in 2011.

Not long after, however, his crimes caught up with him. It was revealed that he had accepted bribes from investors in return for favours from the state government, in addition to other financial misdemeanours, and was charged with "criminal conspiracy, cheating and falsification of accounts". He was found guilty, and served sixteen months in prison before being released on bail.

His party opposed the creation of Telangana state in 2012, and Jaganmohan Reddy himself spent several days on a hunger strike in protest, while still in prison, and submitted his official resignation.

His ‘resignation’ meant little, however, as he re-entered politics immediately after leaving prison. His party lost the 2014 election, leaving him as leader of the opposition for five years, but in 2019 the YSRCP triumphed at the polls and Jaganmohan Reddy became Andhra Pradesh’s Chief Minister.

Such a short space of time, but already his leadership has left its mark. Several studies by organisations such as the World Bank showed Andhra Pradesh to be India’s most business-friendly state every year from 2016-18. No longer. Since coming to power, Jaganmohan Reddy has refused to honour the deals the previous government made with investors, and development projects have ground to a halt.

This is most obvious in the chaos caused by his decentralisation plan, sparking the ongoing Amaravati protests. The former regime had agreed to make the city of Amaravati the new state capital, with innovative plans for development and a vision of creating a vibrant world-class city. Tens of thousands of farmers in the area had agreed to pool their lands for development, in exchange for becoming partners in the city’s future prosperity. The future looked bright. Jaganmohan Reddy changed all that with the announcement that there would be not one state capital but three: Amaravati, Visakhapatnam, and Kurnool. Construction work already in progress around Amaravati ended, and since the announcement, in December 2019, the region has been a focus of peaceful protests against this turnaround by farmers, human rights groups, and the opposition parties.

It remains to be seen how these protests will influence the political landscape but it is clear that Jaganmohan Reddy is not a leader to be trusted. A simple list of some of crimes laid against him, still pending, is alarming to say the least: money laundering, criminal conspiracy, cheating, dishonesty, accepting bribes, forgery, rioting armed with deadly weapons, criminal intimidation, mischief causing damage to public property, criminal force to deter a public servant from discharging of his duty – and more.

He is due to face trial for disproportionate assets charges against him in the near future, standing accused of economic fraud and the unlawful accumulation of well over one crore rupees (more than US $100,000). This is India’s chance to show that the justice system is not broken – that no-one, not even our leaders, are above the law.