HYDERABAD: In sharp contrast to the welcome accorded to Shashi Tharoor, veteran leader Mallikarjun Kharge was accorded a rousing reception by the TPCC when he reached the city on Saturday to campaign for the Congress presidential election.
While Tharoor held a press conference in a hotel where he urged PCC delegates to support his candidature, top TPCC leaders – A Revanth Reddy, N Uttam Kumar Reddy, K Jana Reddy, V Hanumantha Rao, Shabbir Ali, Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Ponnam Prabhakar, SA Sampath, Damodar Raja Narasimha and Mallu Ravi – were among those who welcomed Kharge at the Indira Bhavan on Gandhi Bhavan premises on Saturday. Incidentally, none of these leaders had evinced interest in meeting Tharoor.
Kharge describes Telangana as his native place
When this question was posed to Kharge, he said that he was “ghar ka aadmi” (a member of the family) of Telangana as his native place was part of the erstwhile Hyderabad State. Asking the PCC delegates to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, Kharge said: “Slogans like ‘Kharge tum aage chalo, hum peeche hai’, will not work. Everyone has to work together. My election is not only for me but everyone.”
Later, addressing the press conference at Gandhi Bhavan, Kharge said that Congress delegates have been supporting him to uphold the party’s ideology, fortify the party, and protect constitutional values and democracy. He said that he would implement the Udaipur declaration if he is elected the Congress president.
No let-up in the fight against BJP Stating that the election of the Congress president was a truly democratic process, Kharge wondered how the presidents of the BJP were actually elected. “How did Nadda, Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh become BJP presidents?” he asked. He said that if elected, he would continue a relentless fight like current interim president Sonia Gandhi against the Narendra Modi government.
KCR loved one, married another Meanwhile, reminding that at one point in time TRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao had said that he would merge his party into the Congress, Kharge said that the Chief Minister “loved one (Congress), and married another (BJP)”, hinting that the pink party president was in an unofficial alliance with the saffron party. Kharge reminded the PCC delegates how Rao had changed his stance of merging his party into Congress soon after meeting UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi along with his family.
Slamming the idea of converting the TRS into a national party, Kharge said that many regional parties have done the same but nothing has changed. “Parties like TMC converged into AITMC, and ADMK into AIADMK. However, they failed to win a single seat outside their state. The same thing will happen with TRS as it turned into BRS,” Kharge ridiculed.