Story behind Sharmila Sonia Meeting

The exercise that began soon after the Karnataka results were out when Sharmila, the daughter of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and sister of AP Chief Minister Y S Jaganmohan Reddy made her first moves to join Congress party culminated on Thursday with a 30 minute meeting with Sonia Gandhi.

Th efforts to join Congress party began when she discussed the issue with Karnataka Deputy CM D K Shivakumar who is a family friend of YSR soon after the Karnataka results were announced.

Since then there have been speculations that Sharmila will join the Congress party and will be made the chief of AP Congress and would be asked to take on Jagan since there were rumours that both the brother and sister were at logger heads and that they were not even attending the birth or death anniversaries together at Idupalapaya.

However, Sharmila had neither denied nor confirmed anything about her moves to join the Congress. All that she had done was to make a statement that she was more focused on Telangana. Well this has now led to a different kind of discussion in the political circles. Why is Sharmila wanting to focus on Telangana? If she was really having differences with her brother why is she not showing her strength in AP. She was the star campaigner for Jaganmohan Reddy and had had taken up padayatra and had also campaigned across Andhra Pradesh and had received good response from the people. Her connect with people of AP was much more than what she could get in Telangana. Why not strive to bring in real Rajanna Rajyam in Andhra?

It was also said that many in Telangana Congress were not so positive in recommending her name to the party high command. It was reported that she had demanded about 20 seats as a pre-condition to merge her party. The TPCC certainly is not ready to part with so many seats for a new entrant.

Amidst this scenario, it now remains to be seen whether the Congress had given her the green signal to join the party or not and if they had given any assurance and how it proposes to utilize her services.

Sharmila had gone to the residence of Sonia Gandhi at 10 Janpath this morning and held talks with her. She was there for about 30 minutes.

However, the Congress has remained tight-lipped on the development related to Sharmila’s plan of joining Congress or merging her party with the grand old party.

The Congress has been gearing up for the high octane election for the 119-member Assembly in Telangana later this year where it plans to dethrone the ruling K. Chandrashekar Rao-led Bharath Rashtra Samithi (BRS).

The Congress is leaving no stone unturned in the southern state to ensure victory where it has been unable to form a government after the formation of Telangana in 2014.