Are senior leaders liability for Congress in Telangana?

Hyderabad: Sometimes having octogenarian leaders can prove to be dangerous for the party. The Congress party which is trying to give a tough fight to the ruling BRS in the ensuing Assembly elections and is going to launch a bus yatra led by former AICC president Rahul Gandhi to show that the party and its leaders were united got a jerk on Wednesday when K Jana Reddy made a statement that he could be the CM face of the Congress party if it comes to power. He said he was not after the post but the post would come after him.

It may be mentioned here that he has not been given a ticket from Nagarjuna Sagar Assembly by the party high command which chose his son K Jayaveer Reddy in his place. This statement of Jana Reddy came while he was interacting not with Congressmen or dissidents in the party but during his talks with a group of leaders from BRS who joined the Congress in Nagarjuna Sagar constituency. He expressed his desire to be the CM claiming that people want to see him as chief minister. It may be recalled that he had badly lost the polls during the by election to BRS candidate Nomula Bhagath.

“The way all of you came suddenly without my knowledge, the post (of chief minister) may also come to me suddenly,” he said amid loud cheers from his supporters.

Recalling that he became a minister at the age of 36, Jana Reddy said he has a seniority of 55 years in the party. “Without aspiring for any posts, I got the opportunity to hold various positions in my long political career,” he said.

Jana Reddy served as a minister under four chief ministers in united Andhra Pradesh.

A seven-time MLA, he became the first leader of opposition in Telangana Assembly in 2014. He, however, lost the 2018 election from Nagarjuna Sagar and was also unsuccessful in the by-election held in 2021.

Congress circles say that such untimely comments by leaders like Jana Reddy would create avoidable problems for the party at a time when it was fighting the BRS and wants to catapult the party into power. If the party comes to power, major part of the credit would go to the TPCC president who virtually resurrected the party and brought it to the level of emerging as a major rival to BRS. Thus he becomes the front runner for the CMs post. But to avoid any controversy and dissension, the AICC decided not to announce anyone as the CM face exactly as it had done in Karnataka.