By Oracle
Chevella MP Mr. Konda Vishweshwar Reddy is thoroughly mistaken. He has left the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and it has not surprised anybody. On its side, the TRS has not shown any knee-jerk reaction.
Interestingly, he lost no time in meeting Senior Congress leader S Jaipal Reddy on Monday in Hyderabad and Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on Tuesday. He will formalize his entry into the Congress in a couple of days at a public meeting in Hyderabad in the presence of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
The exit of a Lok Sabha member from the TRS may have caused some embarrassment to the party in the election time, but surely the party echelons and cadres have taken it in their stride. After all, heavens are not going to fall.
Mr. Reddy’s exit hasn’t generated a pertinent and possible question of “why so?” Instead, it has triggered an interesting question: “So, what?”
This explains as to why hasn’t his exit caused any ripples within the party. This move of the MP has been simmering for quite some time. Also, there have been at least half a dozen attempts by senior TRS leaders to dissuade him from leaving.
Though Mr. Reddy’s caterwauling, in his resignation sent to Chief Minister and TRS president K Chandrashekar Rao, about a widening gap between people and the party, he actually could neither see the things unfolding through the prism of a common man, nor could he take a bird’s eye view which the party leadership would normally take.
He perceived his own personal lack of connect with people as a widening gap between people and the party. It is neither caste war or the conflict in the party’s principles or anything that’s being made out to be by certain “self-styled social media intellectuals” or some vested interests in the conventional media. The anti-TRS social media intellectuals have been portraying the exit of the MP as if the TRS has lost everything.
After all, exits and entries in the election time are common and Mr. Reddy, who hails from a very reputable and respectable family, has, however, proved to be a run-of-the-mill politician. He released a video too explaining his side of the story.
Well, there are no qualms for anybody about the performance of the MP in the Lok Sabha. As he himself had explained, he was one among those who dutifully raised several issues and attended the sessions regularly.
The point which the MP conveniently missed was that his corporate vision blurred the reality. He is surely not a people’s man in the sense that his connect with grassroots level party workers and also common public is abysmal. If this disconnect is painted as TRS, as a party, was “becoming more and more distant from the very people…” and “… the government is becoming inaccessible to people”, it seems to belong on rhetoric and short on substance. Mr. Reddy has not factored in the various development and welfare schemes that touched millions of lives in Telangana.
His political intent could not be concealed for too long a time and it’s exposed to Mr. Reddy’s meeting with Rahul Gandhi. He would be a natural choice for the Congress from Chevella Lok Sabha seat. This might further cause a heartburn among the existing Congress leaders who aspired for being accommodated in the Assembly and now not even in Lok Sabha polls.
Mr. Reddy has a running feud with Minister M Mahender Reddy, who has a considerable following among the TRS cadres and also common people, over certain issues which have nothing to do with the party or the people. This is known to many people in Ranga Reddy district. If he could not resolve them amicably, how can it become a reason for the TRS becoming more and more distant from the people? His reasons are just a ploy to lend credence to his exit from the TRS and joining the Congress.
Efforts to dissuade him from leaving the party by Minister KTR are just to give him a long rope, but not a bid to mollify him. Men may come and men may go, but the party goes on forever.