TPCC President Revanth Reddy is left to fend for himself on the issue of free electricity to farmers. As the stir is getting intensified, Revanth is deserted by the party seniors without any moral support. All the Congress old-timers remain tightlipped over the row despite heavy damage being inflicted on the party.
Speaking to NRIs in the USA, the TPCC Chief maintained that 24-hour free power to farmers is purposeless and just three hours of electricity would be enough for farmers. These comments created a furore in Telangana with farmers staging protests across the state. While many netizens successfully took the issue to the public by widely sharing Revanth’s comments, the Congress party was caught unawares and failed in defending their president.
Even the senior partymen left Revanth in lurch. Except Ponnam Prabhakar, no senior leader came to the rescue of their president. Leaders like Komati Reddy Venkat Reddy decried Revanth’s statements stressing that the latter can’t call shots on policy matters like free power. Though the image of Telangana Congress has taken a serious dent, the old-timers like Uttam Kumar Reddy, Jana Reddy, Bhatti Vikramarka, Jagga Reddy, Damodar Raja Narasimha, Jeevan Reddy, Sridhar Babu, Geetha Reddy, etc., didn’t defend either their party or their state unit’s chief. The senior leaders even defied the call given by Revanth Reddy to take part in the protests at substations against CM KCR.
The political grapevine has it that the seniors are angry with Revanth’s incendiary remarks as it has the potential to badly affect the party’s prospects in the wake of forthcoming state assembly elections. Surmounting the challenge of convincing the public and the seniors would certainly be an uphill task for Revanth. And he has only himself to blame for landing in a controversy.