Hyderabad, June 11: Chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy is flying in his predecessor’s footsteps.

N. Chandrababu Naidu had triggered an uproar when he decided to take a helicopter to work. Now the Congress government in the state is reconsidering the proposal to fly the current chief minister from his home to the secretariat. The reason: security.

Reddy has been hopping across the state in a Bell Canada eight-seater, inviting criticism from his rivals and smirks from his party members. In May, he flew for 21 days. “He would have completed the entire month on his copter but for visits to Delhi for five days,” said a state Congress leader.

Costing approximately Rs 1,200 a minute, the chief minister’s chopper rides have lightened the exchequer by Rs 5 to 6 lakh a day. The Congress government has now set its sights on a bigger and better machine that will cost around Rs 25 crore.

Reddy, who had slammed Naidu’s chopper hopping while in the Opposition, has flown for almost 75 days in the last five months, which means he spent about two and a half months in the air, his critics in the Left parties have calculated.

“It is unbecoming of a chief minister who styles himself as pro-farmer to fly around the state in a helicopter while almost every third day, a farmer committed suicide in the state,” said CPM secretary B.V. Raghavulu.

The government, however, argues that the Maoist threat to the chief minister’s life has led Reddy to avoid travelling by road. When his helicopter developed a snag once, “we had to mobilise almost 1,000 policemen from all local police stations to sterilise the route (about 100 km from the state capital) in a matter of one hour”, said a police officer.

The state government has set up a civil aviation corporation headed by Captain S.N. Reddy, a former station manager of Begumpet airport, which has drawn a roadmap for building around 15 permanent helipads at key locations.