Congress can't miss this bus

When the Congress High Command dispatched Ghulam Nabi Azad to Hyderabad this week, Congress MLAs were told he would be talking to them about two main problems that the party was faced with. The first, was the Telangana agitation and the looming deadline in June, by which time the Congress would have to make its stand clear. The second was the humiliating defeat in Kadapa at the hands of Jagan Mohan Reddy and the question of how to contain him.

Perhaps the exercise would have made Azad realise that matters have come to such a pass in Andhra Pradesh, that both these issues have become closely connected. In fact, together, they now have a direct bearing on the Congress party’s future integrity in the state.

But first things first. Andhra Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy is understood to have told Ghulam Nabi Azad that there were members of his Cabinet, who were secretly reporting to Jagan Mohan Reddy.  To anyone who’s been following Andhra politics, this is nothing new. It is common knowledge that most of the present crop of Congress MLAs in Andhra Pradesh were hand-picked and groomed by the late YSR, Jagan’s father. They also owe much of their present status to his largesse. Critics of YSR (and now Jagan) say, they also owe most of their ‘wealth’ to him.

It wasn’t in the least surprising then, to see the large number of Andhra MLAs propose Jagan’s name for the Chief Minister’s post, after his father’s tragic death. It wasn’t surprising even, to watch the Congress leadership wringing their hands collectively in utter helplessness, as Jagan towered over all else in the state. With his record-breaking victory margin in the Kadapa bye-election, he has only become even more of a threat to the Congress’ integrity in the state.

So, when Kiran Reddy complains of Cabinet Ministers reporting to Jagan, he should look first at those closest to him – his advisors. Among them, Neelakanthapuram Raghuveera Reddy, the Revenue Minister, who incidentally, was among the first to propose Jagan Mohan’s name for the post of Chief Minister after his father’s death. For the moment though, the names understood to be on top of the hit-list are Vasanth Kumar (Tourism Minister), D Prasada Rao (Roads and Buildings Minister) and B Satyanarayana (Transport Minister).

Azad has his job cut out for him. The malaise appears to be the norm in the Andhra Congress when it comes to party MLAs sleeping with the enemy.

Meanwhile, Telangana is back on the Congress’ radar, with an impressive gathering of politicians and activists sending out a strong message to the party leadership, from Jantar Mantar in the national capital today. June 1 is the deadline for a “favourable announcement” on the creation of Telangana by the Congress, and the party leadership will find it terribly difficult to buy more time, or avoid a direct confrontation with its own MPs and MLAs on the issue.

The Congress is caught in a Catch-22 situation on Telangana. Even if it does decide to carve out the state from Andhra Pradesh, it will not be able to capitulate on the move, as it hasn’t been associated with the Telangana movement like the TRS has. Past experiments like that of Jharkhand and Uttaranchal have scarcely yielded any results for the Congress. Telangana will also endlessly complicate the Congress’s Parliamentary calculations, as it isn’t clear just how many from the 17 possible Parliamentary seats from Telangana the Congress can win. The creation of Telanganawill also have a backlash on the Congress when it comes to the question of the remaining 25 seats from the Andhra and Rayalseema regions, further impacting the Congress’ possible strength.

When you consider the present situation in Andhra Pradesh, with Jagan Mohan going from strength to strength, and the internal divide within the Congress deepening with every false move by the party leadership, Telangana could very well prove to be the one strand of thread that finally unravels the Congress in Andhra Pradesh.