Most of the faction leaders do not just want tickets for themselves and their followers, but also want to deny tickets to their opponents.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi is keen on coming to power in Telangana in the coming Assembly elections and improving his tally in the Lok Sabha too. But with at least 10 leaders in the race for the post of Chief Minister, the party is divided into umpteen number of warring factions, thus becoming a headache to the high command just two months ahead of polls.
The unity mantra preached by Gandhi to the Telangana Congress leaders only last Sunday failed to have any impact as senior state leaders have begun publicly attacking each other.
Even AICC secretary and former MP R.C. Khuntia, who has been made in charge of the party affairs in the state, is under attack from the rival factions. Gandhi has rushed senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad to control the damage.
Some internal surveys conducted by the AICC and the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) in the last few weeks have painted a rosy picture to the party, especially in the wake of resentment among the students and unemployed youth towards the K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) led TRS government. The surveys hinted at Congress scoring big in Telangana.
During his visit to Hyderabad last month, Gandhi confidently claimed that his party would come to power in Telangana while improving its position in neighboring Andhra in the coming elections. He told the party seniors to maintain discipline and work hard to win the polls, so as to cash in on the public resentment against the KCR government. But the internal unity is not an easy thing for Congress.
There are at least 10 CM aspirants in Congress: TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, Opposition Leader K. Jana Reddy, former Union minister S. Jaipal Reddy, former ministers and MLAs Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, D.K. Aruna, J. Geetha Reddy, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, Ponnala Lakshmaiah, former Rajya Sabha MP V. Hanumanth Rao and former TDP MLA (defected to Congress) A. Revanth Reddy.
Besides them, there are quite a few others who too are in the race and want to test their luck in the last minute in case the party wins the numbers. Interestingly, every CM aspirant has his or her own group and publicity and social media wings so as to tarnish the image of others, even at the cost of damaging the overall party image.
Everything appeared smooth till CM KCR dissolved the Assembly on 6 September and Gandhi came here to address a public meeting in the city. From the next day, the differences among the groups erupted into a public spat and verbal attacks. To contain the damage, Gandhi called as many as 41 seniors to Delhi on 16 September and issued gag orders to them.
The announcement of 10 party panels to prepare for the coming Assembly elections by Gandhi on 20 September has exposed the simmering differences among the groups as some of them openly attacked the high command for ignoring them or for being “sold” to the rival groups. The AICC has included as many as 223 in these 10 panels.
There were some goof-ups like inclusion of the name of former Assembly Speaker K.R. Suresh Reddy in two panels—election committee and coordination committee, even as he defected to ruling TRS 10 days ago. AICC withdrew his name within an hour, but the mistake has exposed the lack of coordination in the party.
The constitution of the panels has also prompted Congress MLC and former MP Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy, brother of Venkat Reddy, a CM aspirant, to attack Khuntia, saying that he has become a “Shani” (Saturn or evil god) to the party. Rajagopal Reddy termed the appointment of Revanth Reddy in the powerful election committee as “detrimental to the party interests”.
Rajagopal Reddy was instantly served with a show-cause notice by the disciplinary committee, but the former on Friday night once again attacked the party leaders for “ignoring the genuine leaders” and giving importance to the defectors like Revanth Reddy. Meanwhile, Revanth Reddy has openly claimed that he was a CM candidate and that his defection from TDP has tilted the scales in favour of the Congress.
Rajagopal Reddy attacked both TPCC president Uttam Kumar Reddy and working president Bhatti Vikramarka as someone who stayed on as ministers in the Cabinet of then Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy who opposed the formation of Telangana tooth and nail till the last minute in 2014.
“It is obvious that these leaders who sit in the party office, Gandhi Bhavan, are selling party tickets,” alleged Rajagopal Reddy.
Another senior leader and former RS MP Hanumanth Rao too publicly lashed out at the party for filling the committees with the “wrong people”.
Rao, an important OBC leader, told this newspaper that he wanted to be in the campaign committee, but he was included in the strategic planning committee. “Better they should have put me in jail as I wanted to campaign all over the state,” he said.
Gandhi is reportedly unhappy with the internal squabbling in Telangana Congress. But now, most of the leaders who are not happy with the committees they were included in, are planning to go to Delhi to complain against one another. Most of the faction leaders do not just want tickets to themselves and their followers, but also want to deny tickets to their opponents.
While talking to the media at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday night, Khuntia regretted the developments saying that it was unfortunate that the seniors were fighting among themselves at a time when they should be united and fight against the ruling TRS.
“What can we do, there are only 119 seats but there is a long list of aspirants? I hope things will be sorted out soon,” he said.