State of play
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently met with the warring leaders of the Telangana Congress in New Delhi. Mr. Gandhi apparently conveyed that he was willing to sacrifice people in the interests of the Grand Old Party. The message was that the party is supreme and persons can benefit politically only if the party comes to power. Whether the target of his comments were the senior leaders of the party who are questioning the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief, A. Revanth Reddy, or the leadership itself is unclear.
Senior leaders, who have personal and political issues with the PCC chief, lobbied and finally succeeded in ensuring the meeting. Some of them feel that Mr. Revanth Reddy, an “outsider” like Navjot Singh Sidhu was in the Punjab Congress, cannot lead the party. As expected, the meeting turned out to be a forum for complaints. Some leaders, who rarely come out in the media against the PCC chief, reportedly questioned his style and sought remedies, while others such as T. Jayaprakash Reddy and V. Hanumantha Rao, who have been targeting Mr. Revanth Reddy publicly, remained surprisingly silent. This indicates that the group led by Mr. Revanth Reddy succeeded to a large extent in silencing the dissidents by holding meetings with them and assuring them that they would be elevated to national committees.
