Congress faces a wave of protests

​Hyderabad: Selection of candidates by the Congress and seat sharing with its alliance partners has reached the climax with revolts and threats of resignations and protests becoming the order of the day. Congress party offices at Hyderabad and Delhi have been reverberating with protests by ticket seekers on Friday. Disgruntled leaders on Friday resorted to making serious allegations against the senior leaders. 

The alliance partners who have been seething with rage over delay in the announcement of seats and allocation of seats have threatened to break away from the alliance and announce their own action plans. The Telangana Congress leaders who left for Dubai on a one-day tour would return to Hyderabad on Saturday and the Congress list may be out on the same day. It may announce the first list with 76 names.    

There was a high-voltage drama on Friday as the D-day for announcement of candidates by the Congress and seat sharing is just one or two days away. The Communist Party of India has expressed serious objections over allocation of only three seats and its state secretary held discussions with other non-Congress partners on the issue.

The Congress faced the wrath of senior leader A Revanth Reddy and Komatireddy Venkat Reddy on non-allocation of tickets to their followers. Revanth Reddy threatened to resign to his post if 10 of his followers who joined the Congress along with him were not given tickets.

Revanth who has been camping in Delhi for the last few days for getting tickets to his followers got frustrated on Friday as his followers were denied tickets. He told the high command that it should honour the promise of giving tickets to 10 of his followers who joined the Congress along with him.

He reportedly said that this was a humiliation to him who joined the Congress on the promise of tickets to him and to his followers. He was quite serious on getting tickets to his followers like Patel Ramesh Reddy, Vem Narendar Reddy and few others.

Former MLA Komatireddy Venkat Reddy has also warned the Congress high command with consequences if ticket is denied to Chirumarthi Lingaiah of Nakrekal constituency. He was sore at the allocation of this seat to the alliance partners.

He warned that he would leave the Congress and contest all the 12 seats from Bahujan Samaj Party in the old Nalgonda district. He does not want to contest from the Congress if Lingaiah was denied ticket.

Sensing the danger, Congress state affairs in-charge RC Khuntia has made a statement in the evening that no decision has been taken on Nakrekal seat and there was no need to bother about it. Former PCC president Ponnala Laxmaiah got angry with the decision of giving the seat of Janagaon to TJS president Kodandaram. Laxmaiah was a strong aspirant for the seat and has been campaigning for the past one month.

He has been offered the ticket of Warangal West. But his followers were not sure even securing it as there was a proposal to allot this to the Telugu Desam under alliance arrangement.

A controversy has taken place on the Cantonment seat as the party proposed to give the ticket to former MP Sarvey Satyanarayana. Strong Congress ticket aspirant from this constituency Krishank expressed serious objection and threatened to contest as an independent.

Congress leaders of Khanapur and Malkajgiri constituencies have staged protests in front of Gandhi Bhavan. They wanted the party to retain Malkajgirir ticket and give ticket of Khanapur to Azmir Naik.

At Delhi, the AICC witnessed protests by students and SC leaders. The students of Osmania University made protests demanding tickets to student leaders. They alleged that no student was selected by the selection committee.

A leader of the Congress from Tungaturthi made serious allegations against the Congress leaders. He alleged that son of chairman of AICC screening committee Bhakthacharan Das has collected Rs 3 crore in the name of securing tickets.

Meanwhile, the CPI has got restive on the announcement of three tickets to it by the Congress. Party state secretary Chada Venkat Reddy demanded that his party should be given five seats at any cost or they would desert the alliance.

The CPI leaders held a meeting in the morning and decided to bring pressure on the Congress to give five seats. They have demanded allocation of Kothagudem seat to the party.

Later in the evening, Telangana Jana Samithi and CPI leaders have met former opposition leader in Assembly K Jana Reddy and discussed the unilateral declaration of seats to be allocated to alliance partners with him.