A part of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s anger in the Lok Sabha was also felt by Telangana Congress MPs Wednesday. Irritated by the MPs voicing the separate state demand in the House again, Sonia gave them a dressing down even as the opposition members watched.
Irked by the protest during the session, Sonia told the MPs to either sit without making any noise or leave the immediately. The BJP MPs suppressed giggles, adding to the humiliation of the MPs who never thought she would fly off the handle. “We thought that at the most, she would send a word of warning to us through a whip,” said one Telangana MP.
It all started when the Telangana group - Gutta Sukhender Reddy, Ponnam Prabhakar, G Vivek, K Rajagopal Reddy and Manda Jagannadham - were surrounding the new home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, asking him that he should support the Telangana cause.
While some MPs bent over Shinde, a couple of them stood close to him and talked amongst each other. This was when Sonia Gandhi stepped inside the Hall after the adjournment.
On seeing her, the MPs came to attention and she approached them, a few raised Jai Telangana slogans, turning her livid with rage. As she proceeded to give them verbal thrashing, a few BJP MPs quipped that the she must rein in her MPs when a debate was going on a national issue (the Assam violence). “I have never seen her in such a fit of rage. This is the first time,” said one eyewitness MP. The Telangana MPs pulled made a quiet exit from the House. But, later when mediapersons asked the reason for their exit, they acted as if everything was normal.