HYDERABAD: Former vice chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Marri Shashidhar Reddy on Tuesday severed all ties with the Congress by sending a heavily worded eight-page letter to the former Congress president Sonia Gandhi.He also announced that he would be joining the BJP in about a week.
“For me, it is Telangana First. Since the Congress has miserably failed to play its role as the main Opposition with a commitment to protect the people’s interests, I wish to bid farewell to the party and pursue viable options,” Shashidhar Reddy wrote in his letter to Sonia Gandhi.He said that the State Congress was sold out, compromised and engaged in match-fixing with TRS under successive TPCC presidents.
Addressing a press conference at his residence, Shashidhar Reddy -- son of former chief minister Marri Chenna Reddy -- who has been part of the Congress for almost the entirety of his five-decade long political career, took pains to remind his family’s association with the party. Recounting his association with the Nehru-Gandhi family, he said that he had never imagined he would cease to be a Congressman.
Shashidhar Reddy blamed the Congress national leadership, including AICC general-secretary KC Venugopal, and successive AICC Telangana in-charges, and TPCC presidents for his departure from the party.“Successive AICC in-charges have done a great disservice to the party. Initially, it was Digvijay Singh, followed by RC Khuntia. Now it’s Manickam Tagore, present in-charge,” he said.
Suggesting a “pugmark theory” that he said was the reason behind the elevation of Revanth Reddy as TPCC chief, Shashidhar Reddy alleged that Tagore has been treating Revanth as a “goose that lays golden eggs” and giving importance to only the economically rich as a strategy.
“There are enough instances that give credence to suspicions that it was not just Manickam Tagore who has been the recipient of largesse from Revanth Reddy, but also KC Venugopal,” Shashidhar Reddy said. He said that the AICC general secretaries, acting in a partisan manner, refused to listen to or entertain anything against Revanth Reddy.
Stating that Congress missed out on opportunities to take on the TRS, he said that the party allowed TRS to get away “scot-free”. Shashidhar Reddy added that the party has failed the people of Telangana. “There is a widespread feeling that some leaders at the helm of Congress were compromised, and as a result, people gradually started losing confidence in our leadership,” Shashidhar Reddy added, stating that the party’s national leadership also followed suit by functioning in a corporate style.
Bitterly slamming Revanth Reddy, he said, “Revanth is eligible only for blackmailing politics. He is a blackmailer, cheater.”