Kiran camp wages all out war on his detractors

Hyderabad : The loyalists of the Chief Minister, N Kiran Kumar Reddy are out to step up the counter attack on party MPs from Telangana who are increasingly getting identified with the camps that have been differing with him on the statehood demand and have been busy queering the pitch for him in New Delhi.

Some of the MLCs loyal to the Chief Ministers wrote to the AICC president Sonia Gandhi, the Party General Secretary, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Vayalar Ravi seeking action against the Telangana Members of Parliament who had been deliberately targeting Chief Minister at the cost of the interests of the Congress party and the government.

Talking to mediapersons at the CLP office, MLCs Pulla Padmavathi, Farooq Hussain and M S Prabhakar said that the party had been paying a heavy price because of the troublesome moves of the MPs such as Ponnam Prabhakar, Gutha Sukhender Reddy, G Vivek, S Rajaiah, Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy and the former MP, K Keshav Rao.

They complained that the Telangana MPs rushed to the Chief Minister's camp office during the Telangana March only to gain some political mileage. They preferred to court arrest so as to avoid participating in the march. They took strong exception to the tirade launched by Ponnam Prabhakar and others against the Chief Minister.

They said that Ponnam Prabhakar had regularly been in touch with the TRS chief. He had scant regard for the party. He was the one who defied the party leadership and went to the extent of contesting as a Congress rebel against the former PCC Chief and Congress nominee, M Satyanarayana Rao in Karimnagar in the past.

Leaders such as Gutha Sukhender Reddy, who came from the Telugu Desam have been targeting the Chief Minister for their own ends. The Congress MLCs said that the Chief Minister had sufficiently demonstrated his commitment for development. Welfare measures such as Rs 1-a-kg rice scheme launched by him had enhanced the popularity of the Congress party in the state.

If the leadership failed to handle the persons coming in the way of the implementation of the scheme, it would have a bearing on the electoral fortunes of the party in the long run, they added.

In the meantime some Telangana ministers and MLAs were also said to be planning to go to Delhi to meet Sonia Gandhi and other leaders so as to appraise them of the state of affairs in the state worsening because of the dissenters. Of late, a strong lobby is emerging in support of the Chief Minister, source said.