Telangana Congress suffers further erosion

HYDERABAD: The Telangana Congress is slowly disappearing from the state’s political map. After the exit of five party MLCs to the TRS on Wednesday, the Congress has been reduced to a minority in the Telangana legislative council and indications are that the few remaining MLCs will also join the pink party in the coming days. More importantly, four Congress MLAs seeking to switch over are in talks with the TRS.
Telangana veteran AR Amos, V Bhoopal Reddy, S Jagadeswar Reddy, N Rajalingam and T Bhanuprasad Rao were the five Congress MLCs who joined the TRS on Wednesday. According to party sources, another member, K Yadava Reddy, is all set to join the TRS after the zilla parishad elections. Yadava Reddy got elected as ZPTC member from Ranga Reddy and the party has enough strength to bag the chairman’s post in the Ranga Reddy ZP. Sources said that after getting elected as the ZP chairman, Yadava Reddy will migrate to the pink party.
The revolt began overnight after PCC president Ponnala Lakshmaiah met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and received assurance that he would continue in the post. There has been resentment among MLAs, MLCs and some MPs over Ponnala’s leadership. Everybody thought that Ponnala would step down following the defeat of the party in Telangana. But when that did not happen, a majority of the party legislators wrote to the high command seeking a change of guard in Telangana. In fact, in the first ever post-poll meeting of TPCC, Nalgonda MLA Komatireddy Venkat Reddy opposed the continuance of the Ponnala team and walked out of the meeting. Among the MLCs, the first to revolt was A R Amos, one of the leaders of the 1969 Telangana movement. Taking moral responsibility for the defeat, Amos had earlier resigned as TPCC vice president.
All the Congress leaders expected some indication from 10 Janpath regarding the change of leadership and a review meeting at the highest level on the factors that led to the party’s rout in Telangana. However, the high command, which summoned Ponnala to Delhi last Monday, reportedly expressed satisfaction over his explanation for the party’s defeat and asked him to continue as TPCC president.
It is this factor that triggered the latest exodus in the Telangana Congress. “The high command appears to have been satisfied by the Ponnala report which said that the defeat was partly due to anti-incumbency and the Narendra Modi factor. This shows that there has been no realisation in the Congress of its follies that led to its defeat even after the party being responsible for Telangana getting statehood. I joined the party in 1952. I was the founder of the Telangana Non-Gazetted Officers association (TNGO) in 1969. But, sadly, the Congress is not recognising the contribution of its original leaders,” Amos told TOI.