Telangana: Congress leaders walk for leadership mantle

Hyderabad: While the BJP and TRS are slugging it out to win the Nagarjuna Sagar by-election, the top leaders of Telangana Congress instead of standing by the party candidate and senior most leader K Jana Reddy are competing in taking up padayatras. The interesting part is that all the three leaders who have hit the roads are aspirants for the post of TPCC president.

As the party working president A Revanth Reddy embarked upon padayatra from old Mahbubnagar in the name of 'Rajiv Rythu Bharosa yatra' a week ago and has been drawing impressive crowds, another senior leader and Bhongir MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy on Saturday announced the launch of his padayatra from Nalgonda district on February 20 .

His reason for the padayatra is to highlight the pending irrigation projects in the drought-hit district.

He wants the government to complete Brahmana Velli and SLBC (Srisailam Left bank Canal) projects so that the irrigation needs of the district can be met. The Congress leader said that the TRS government had deliberately put on hold the two projects and had not released any funds. The MP threatened to take up indefinite hunger strike inside the SLBC tunnel if the government did not address the long-pending issue.

On the other hand, CLP leader Bhatti Vikramarka is also on padayatra visiting villages and interacting with the farmers directly to ascertain the ground-level problems being encountered by the farming community from Adilabad district.

The senior leaders stopped attending meetings held by the TPCC on the by-election and the two MLC seats under the Graduates' constituency quota. Top leaders are pursuing their own agenda instead of putting up a joint fight, party rank and file feels.