HYDERABAD: Sangareddy MLA T Jayaprakash Reddy alias Jagga Reddy on Sunday revealed that AICC general secretary KC Venugopal has directed party leaders to work together, and that will ensure Congress’ victory in the next Assembly elections.
During an informal interaction with the media persons in the Assembly lobbies, the legislator shared the good time and conversations he had with two Chief Ministers of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, the late YS Rajasekhara Reddy and N Kiran Kumar Reddy.
Jagga Reddy recalled how YSR had invited him and another party colleague to join the latter in Delhi. “We were asked to reach Delhi at the earliest. We took a flight. I usually travel by train. That was first and last air travel,” he said.
Lauding YSR’s style of governance and functioning, he said: “Be it a programme or a project, YSR used to follow up on everything until is is successfully completed.” In an indirect dig at the leadership of the party’s Telangana unit, he said: “Congress has no such leader now, not at least in the last two years.”
He also recalled how the party’s AP in-charge and General Secretary Ahmad Patel offered a place for him in the Union Cabinet and how he rejected the offer as he was not interested to serve as a Central minister at that time.
Jagga Reddy, who is also the working president of the State Congress, also recalled how the then Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy took him into confidence and asked him to negotiate with the separate statehood activists, employees and others who sat on hunger strike during the Telangana movement.
“During the Sagara Haram (Telangana March), employees and separate statehood activists and others sat on hunger strikes. CM Kiran Kumar told me and Intelligence Chief Mahender Reddy that not a rubber bullet should be fired on Telangana activists, which, he said, was an order from party president Sonia Gandhi. He also asked me to talk to an ‘important individual’ to end the strike, though I should add that effort failed to fructify. But, the fact is that Kiran Kumar Reddy used to discuss several with me till late into the night,” he said.