The Telangana Congress leaders returned from New Delhi with new strategies to take on the TRS government even as they decided to continue with the existing set up for the District Congress Committees (DCC) till their organisation elections were completed.
TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, CLP leader K. Jana Reddy and TPCC working president Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka who held parleys with the Central leadership preferred not to change the existing party set up and instead focus on the immediate issues like chilli farmers’ woes and reservation for minorities.
A senior leader from New Delhi confessed that the ‘controversial’ statements linking a fake ISIS website to the Telangana police by AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh was part of the strategy to ‘expose’ the TRS leadership on how they viewed Muslim youngsters.
Despite strong reaction from the TRS leadership and the government, Mr. Singh stuck to his statement saying he was ready to take the issue to the court if the government was willing to.
The TRS government, they believe, wants to garner the support of Muslims weaning them away from the Congress proposing 12% reservation clearly knowing that it would be stuck in the legal wrangles.
“We introduced Muslim reservation that was feasible and well within the 50% limit as wanted by the Supreme Court and the TRS can’t take away that credit from us,” said a senior leader.
The attack on the Telangana police’s alleged fake ISIS website has come in handy for the Congress to embarrass the TRS government, the Congress leaders felt and want to use it as a weapon to “expose” the government’s attitude towards Muslims.
The ‘poor’ handling of the chilli farmers’ issue by both the State and Central governments was also discussed at the meeting and the Congress leadership felt that the issue should be used to reach out to the farmers in a big way. “By disturbing the DCC Committees we will lose our focus,” said a Congress functionary.
