The City Congress Committee is a divided house with the party leaders failing to put up a united face even in the party meeting at Andhra Ratna Bhavan, party headquarters, on Saturday.
It was party internal meeting bringing together all the elected representatives from the city together for a discussion on the upcoming elections to the municipalities and the need to prepare the party cadre for it at which former Minister Devineni Rajasekhar (Nehru) while expressing his concern over the lack of involvement of the party cadre in the programmes in the divisions of the city, he wanted this lacuna to be corrected.
Vijayawada Central MLA Malladi Vishnu, who was listening to Mr. Nehru's speech till then, got up jolted by an objection raised by one of the party cadre in the audience and took objection to Mr. Nehru's comments.
Vijayawada MP Lagadapati Rajagopal intervened and shouted down the party workers and tried to pacify both Mr. Nehru and Mr. Vishnu.
Mr. Nehru later apologised for his inadvertent comments and hoped that in future the party leaders and workers would participate in all the programmes so that Congress wins in the municipal elections.
After the meeting, Minister for Secondary Education K. Parthasarathy was asked about the show-cause notice given to PCC secretary Kolunukonda Shivaji, but the Minster avoided terming it beyond his jurisdiction. City Congress president Pyla Sominaidu had not invited Mr. Shivaji, which led to Mr. Shivaji sitting in the audience and when the mediapersons asked Mr. Shivaji, he said he was still part of the Congress and that he had not been suspended and the issue had been settled.
“I will continue to fight for the flyover at the Indrakeeladri turning and work for the Congress under the leadership of Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy, Botsa Satyanarayana and Sonia Gandhi,” he said.
