The Congress leadership has taken a dim view of Kadapa MP Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy's defiant statement that he will go ahead with his Telangana tour, even if he has to quit his Lok Sabha seat.
But, equally, the party is determined not to act in haste. “The Congress is a more than 100-year-old party,” Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said, adding, “it cannot be weakened by one individual.” Pressed to explain whether the Congress leadership feared the political repercussions of taking action against Mr. Reddy, she said such decisions were “not like instant coffee. The party has its own time frame.”
Mr. Reddy has sought time with Congress president Sonia Gandhi to explain his side of the story as he feels that his detractors in the party have misrepresented his activities.
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“I have sought appointments with the party high command to apprise them of what has happened. I will explain to them that I have done nothing wrong,” the 37-year-old Congress MP told journalists. Party sources said that he has not yet been given an appointment with Ms. Gandhi and that he will first have to meet Union Law Minister and general secretary in-charge of Andhra Pradesh Veerappa Moily, who will return to the capital on Tuesday. And, even after that, it is by no means certain that Mr. Reddy will get an audience very quickly, party sources said, pointing out that Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Hooda had to wait several weeks before he was given time with Ms. Gandhi, following an attack on Dalits in a village in his State last month.
Earlier, a defiant Mr. Reddy, who arrived here on Sunday night to meet the Congress leadership, said that no one could stop him from going ahead with his Telangana yatra — its object, he said, was to grieve with the families of those who had either died or committed suicide after hearing the news of the death of his father, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy He also insisted that he had never made “a single political statement” but if it could be proved that he had politicised his yatra, he was willing to resign from the Lok Sabha.
Congress sources here also added that the party leadership would take its time to deal with Mr. Reddy. This is partly because it wants the coming Rajya Sabha elections, in which it hopes to get four candidates through from Andhra Pradesh, to go through smoothly. Indeed, this is why Ms. Gandhi had met Praja Rajyam leader Chiranjeevi in Delhi on Saturday, as insurance against the possible exit of Mr. Reddy and his followers in the party.
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