Admitting for the first time that Congress may not get the simple or absolute majority in Andhra Pradesh as has been claimed by chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, the party high command is putting together a contingency plan for a Congress-led coalition government in the state with a new person as the CM instead of Rajasekhara Reddy.
Highly-placed sources from New Delhi told media hat this was the sum and substance of the exercise of the Congress high command on Tuesday, a day of hectic political activity in the party, which saw party president Sonia Gandhi hold separate meetings with Rajasekhara Reddy and PCC president D Srinivas.
Rajasekhara Reddy, who arrived in New Delhi two days ago, has held a series of meetings with the party’s central leaders since then. According to the sources, during his meeting with Sonia’s political secretary Ahmed Patel on Monday, the CM again expressed confidence that the party will get about 230 assembly seats and 36 Lok Sabha seats.
However, Patel was of the view that this was at variance with the feedback that the high command got from various sources, as well as from AP Congress leaders including D Srinivas. The PCC president was then summoned to New Delhi after which he was granted a separate half-an-hour meeting with the Congress president after her meeting with YSR on Tuesday morning.
The contingency plan which was put together by Congress to retain power in AP was that it should explore the possibility of heading a coalition government comprising, apart from the Congress, the TRS and PRP. “The TRS has already sent us feelers. But the only way to make the TRS and PRP to join the coalition is by propping up a BC chief minister.
TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao had promised on several occasions of empowering the BCs, while PRP chief Chiranjeevi has been more than vocal about ushering in social justice. Thus by proposing the name of a BC as the next CM, the TRS and PRP will have no choice but to support the Congress in case of a hung assembly which appears to be strong possibility now,” said a central Congress leader.
Once such a consensus was broadly arrived at in the Congress high command, the sources said that Rajasekhara Reddy proposed the name of major irrigation minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah, a Telangana Congress and BC leader, as the next CM. “Ponnala has accompanied the CM on his Delhi visit and is perhaps the one or two Telangana Congress leaders close to YSR. Rajasekhara Reddy’s game plan is two-fold. Prop up Ponnala and also deny D Srinivas, another BC leader, the chance of becoming CM,” the sources pointed out and added that Ponnala was also summoned for an audience with Sonia in New Delhi on Tuesday.
A day of intense political activity in the Congress also saw other BC leaders from the state, including K Keshava Rao and V Hanumanth Rao, sharpening their swords to scuttle Ponnala’s chances of becoming CM so that they themselves can stake claim for it.
With the announcement of the election results still almost three weeks away, this contingency plan in the Congress is likely to gather momentum in the next few days as nobody seems sure of securing a simple majority, leave alone an absolute one.
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