ManaTelugu.com - Daily Serials | TV Shows | Movie News

Everybody was aware that former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy was a man of great political foresight.

He used to call shots at the Congress high command on any issue pertaining to erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and the party leadership used to give a lot of weight to his words.

Since 2004, Congress president Sonia Gandhi was hell-bent on granting statehood to Telangana by dividing united AP.

She had a lot of soft corner towards the people of Telangana and she used to give a lot of importance to Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao.

However, she could not take any decision on the Telangana formation only because of strong resistance from YSR.

Right from the day one, he used to put spokes on the proposal on Telangana, stating that it would prove detrimental to the Congress party down south.

This was disclosed by none other than Sanjay Baru, media advisor to then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh at a media interaction on Friday night.

He said before 2009 elections, Sonia wanted to grant statehood to Telangana, since all the parties including the Telugu Desam Party had given letters in support of bifurcation to the Pranab Mukherjee committee.

“However, YSR, in a meeting with Manmohan and Sonia, strongly opposed the move. I was present in that meeting. He categorically told them that if the Telangana is separated, the Congress would lose in both the Telugu States. In Telangana, the credit will go to the TRS and people would vote it to power. And in AP, the people would outright reject the Congress, which would not get a single seat. So, they had to choose between Telangana and the survival of the Congress,” Baru quoted YSR as saying.

So, as long as YSR was alive, Sonia could not overrule his argument. It was only after YSR’s death that she could dare take a decision on bifurcation.

Rest is history and the Congress is buried in both the States. That was YSR’s vision!

Palakurthy MLA Errabelli Dayakar Rao, who had defected from Telugu Desam Party to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, has shot back at his critics about his letter to the Speaker seeking merger of majority of the TDP MLAs with the TRS.

Dayakar told media that what the 12 TDP MLAs had done was no different from what TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu had done in August 1995 when he dethroned then Chief Minister N T Rama Rao.

“What we did was not worse than what Naidu had done in 1995. Those days, Naidu had given a similar letter to then Speaker Yanamala Ramakrishnudu stating that majority of the MLAs were with him and hence, his group should be treated as real Telugu Desam Legislature Party.

We have also done the same. Since 12 out of the 15 MLAs have supported the TRS, we gave a letter to the Speaker seeking to consider as real TDLP which has merged with the TRS. The Speaker accepted our request and declared as associated members of the TRS,” Errabelli said.

The defected MLA said he had joined the TRS without any preconditions.

“If Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao takes me into the Cabinet, I will welcome it. In fact, I have the highest popularity in Telangana, next to KCR,” he claimed.

If the talk going on in the ruling Telugu Desam Party is true, the latest Andhra Pradesh budget introduced by Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu has come a big attraction for a batch of leaders from the YSR Congress party headed by Y S Jaganmohan Reddy.

According to the TDP sources, in the latest budget, the Naidu government announced setting up of a major industrial park at a cost of Rs 23,000 crore, besides a green-field airport at Donakonda in Prakasam district.

It was here that a number of YSR Congress leaders had invested huge amounts in purchase of lands, expecting that the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh would come up at Donakonda, as recommended by Sivaramakrishnan Committee.

However, with Chandrababu Naidu zeroing in on Amarvati region between Vijayawada and Guntur as the capital, all their hopes were shattered and the values of the lands purchased by them had dropped substantially.

Now, with the latest announcement of developmental projects at Donakonda, the YSR Congress batch is said to be too happy, as it would give a lot of scope for them to get back their investments.

Apparently, Naidu had used this masterstroke to woo the Jagan batch and divert their attention from the benami land scam that has surfaced in Amaravati in the recent past!