The Congress party’s love-him-love-him-not relationship with YS Rajasekhara Reddy came to the fore on Friday when several high command glitterati and some PCC stars heaped praise on the late chief minister at a function in New Delhi to release a book on his padayatra of 2003.
And giving credence to the idea that all love is not lost between the Congress and Jagan Mohan Reddy, YSR Congress matriarch Y S Vijayamma was reported by an agency as keeping the door open to a future merger between the two estranged parties.
But then, hastening to clarify, the YSRC sent out a late-evening press release denying any such possibility.
“YSR belongs to the Congress and to no one else,” said the AICC’s emissary to AP, Vayalar Ravi at the function organised by the late chief minister’s alter ego and Rajya Sabha member K V P Ramachandra Rao.
The purpose of the soiree was to release a book of memoirs of YSR from his path-breaking padayatra of 2003.
Azad described the late chief minister as a great leader who never defied the party diktat.
“Rajasekhara Reddy was a disciplined leader of the party. He never crossed the Lakshmana Rekha,” he said.
This high praise of YSR by the high commandos in New Delhi went against the recent calls within the party to sever any association with the YSR legacy and strike out on a new path.
But on Friday, it sounded like an orchestral arrangement with Vijayamma’s statement that the “future would decide” whether they would be an alliance between the YSR Congress and the Congress or even a merger.
Several Congress biggies were at the KVP function in Delhi: Motilal Vora, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Vayalar Ravi, J Dwivedi, RK Dhavan, Rajeev Shukla, PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana and half a dozen ministers from AP.
There were several other local stars from the state: K Chiranjeevi, Kanumuri Bapi Raju, Undavalli Arun Kumar, Ponnam Prabhakar.
It’s not only the Congress that has sounded ambivalent about the YSR legacy.
Even YSRC boss man has been hinting that the door is not shut for a future dalliance with the mother party.
Recently, his wife Bharati Reddy said in clear terms that any truck with the BJP was ruled out, but then an alliance with the Congress would be dictated by “circumstances”.