YSR Congress chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy faced a knife attack from a cafeteria chef at the Visakhapatnam airport on Thursday, escaping with a “deep” gash on his left shoulder, police said.

Reddy’s party claimed that the airport cafeteria, where alleged assailant J. Srinivasa Rao worked, was owned by a politician from the state’s ruling Telugu Desam Party, Harshavardhan.

It accused the Desam of an “attempt to murder” Reddy, the leader of the Opposition in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, provoking a furious denial.

The assailant approached Reddy while the politician was leaving the VIP lounge to board a flight to Hyderabad and requested a “selfie”.

As Reddy posed for the picture, the man pulled out a small knife, the kind generally used in cockfights, and plunged it into his left shoulder.

The man was overpowered by the CISF guards at the airport and handed over to police.

“To everyone worried about my safety, I’d like to inform you that I am safe,” Reddy tweeted after arriving in Hyderabad, where doctors examined him at a private hospital.

“The wounds are deep as per the first report,” Reddy’s party said in a statement.

State police chief R.P. Thakur said the attacker seemed to be a “Jagan fan” and that the assault was a ploy for publicity — a claim the YSR Congress described as “ludicrous”.

The Desam described the assault as an “act of cowardice”. All parties, including the Congress, Jana Sena and the BJP, condemned the attack.

Thakur said that Rao, 30, a college dropout from East Godavari district, had been working as a chef at Fusion Restaurant at the airport for the past one year.

“A 9 to 10-page letter has been recovered from his pocket. We are verifying who wrote the letter and what it contains. Apparently, the attack was for the sake of some publicity,” he said.

“Preliminary information is that the attacker is claiming to be a Jagan fan. We will definitely unearth the reason behind the attack.”

Thakur later said in a media release that a special investigation team had been formed under an assistant commissioner of police.

Minister Nara Lokesh, son of chief minister and Desam chief N. Chandrababu Naidu, tweeted: “Such cowardly attacks have no place in the modern society.”

Deputy chief minister N. China Rajappa said that attacks on people’s representatives would not be tolerated, but added that lawmakers should be cautious while taking selfies with members of the public.

“People come to me too for selfies. I should be careful, as also my security personnel,” Rajappa said.

He claimed the assailant had hailed Reddy before the attack and said his party would win 160 seats in the next Assembly elections.

“Who is he? Which party does he belong to and who instigated him? These are being investigated,” he said.

State social welfare minister N. Anand Babu rejected the YSR Congress’s allegation that the Desam was behind the attack.

“It’s not in Chandrababu’s nature to get people attacked. In fact, the YSRC itself has a criminal nature,” he said.

Congress general secretary Oommen Chandy, state Congress president N. Raghuveera Reddy, actor and Jana Sena president Pawan Kalyan and BJP parliamentarian G.V.L. Narasimha Rao condemned the attack.

“The attempt to murder Jagan is inhuman. Such incidents should not happen in a democracy,” Kalyan said in a statement.

YSR Congress workers and supporters staged protests in several parts of the state.

The weapon that was used to attack Reddy. PTI