With the general elections in Telangana a month away, the Congress party’s newly-appointed president Ponnala Lakshmaiah and working president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy are waging a lonely battle with no support from seniors.
Barring campaign committee chairman C. Damodar Rajanarasimha and TPCC vice-president Md. Ali Shabbir, no senior leader has extended support to the new chiefs. Worse still, there is an intense pressure on the two from seniors to include their choice of candidates for the Assembly and Lok Sabha seats.
Sources in the Telangana Congress told The Hindu on Sunday that leaders like former Minister K. Jana Reddy, former PCC chief D. Srinivas and several other former Ministers are evincing little interest in chalking out the campaign programme or giving advice to office-bearers in the run-up to the elections. Adding to their woes is the absence of Union Ministers and MPs in the strategy sessions. Even as the president and working president are striving hard to get the list of candidates finalised, pressure from certain seniors and the fear of losing tickets is making some sitting MLAs look at other parties. A classic example is the defection of Malkajgiri MLA Akula Rajender. He is said to have quit the party as he failed to get along well with Union Minister Sarvey Satyanarayana. No leader his worth has tried to persuade the MLA to rethink his decision.
Similarly, the growing rift between Mr. Rajanarasimha and government Whip T. Jayaprakash Reddy may see drastic developments in Sangareddy constituency. If Mr. Jayaprakash Reddy is denied the ticket, he may not hesitate to contest as an independent. There is speculation that the former Chief Minister’s wife, Padmini, has shown interest in contesting the Sangareddy seat.
A senior leader said that talk of alliance between Congress and CPI has made the task of the TPCC chief and working president difficult. They are finding it difficult to convince the sitting MLAs, who may be forced to give away their seats to the CPI. MLAs from Mahabubabad and Nakrekal are resenting the move to give seats to CPI. If the party insists on favouring the Left, they may switch their loyalties to the TRS, a senior leader warned.
Aides of Mr. Ponnala Lakshmaiah maintain that a section of the Telangana Congress leaders were trying to create a situation to show that the newly appointed TPCC leaders are inefficient. “By showing defections of the sitting MLAs to other parties, they want to send across a signal that the two leaders had not handled the situation properly,” sources said.
