KCR skips ‘At Home’, keeps Governor waiting

HYDERABAD: On expected lines, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao skipped the ‘At Home’ event hosted by Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan at Raj Bhavan on Monday. All the Cabinet ministers, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) MPs, MLAs, MLCs etc also stayed away from the event.

The Chief Minister is learnt to have dropped his plans to visit Raj Bhavan at the last minute. CMO sources said the Chief Minister had initially decided to attend the event and even a communication was sent to Raj Bhavan in this regard.

Following this, the Chief Minister’s convoy was kept ready at Pragathi Bhavan at around 6.30 pm. A few ministers, TRS MLAs, MLCs and MPs waited for the Chief Minister at Pragathi Bhavan to proceed to Raj Bhavan along with him.

After waiting for nearly an hour, the convoy was shifted to its parking place again leaving ministers, officials and TRS leaders surprised, who came to know that the Chief Minister cancelled his visit to Raj Bhavan.

After CMO sent communication to Raj Bhavan that the Chief Minister would attend the event, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar waited at the alighting point to receive the Chief Minister for some time. However, he later conveyed to the Governor about the Chief Minister's absence.

All this is learnt to have delayed the ‘At Home’ by nearly half-an-hour as the Governor waited for the Chief Minister’s arrival to start the event. After the Chief Secretary conveyed the information about the Chief Minister’s absence, the Governor came out, greeted the invitees and started the event.

The Chief Minister attended the events at Raj Bhavan till August 2020. However, the relations between the Governor and the Chief Minister turned sour after the Governor kept the nomination of Padi Kaushik Reddy as MLC under the Governor's quota pending for months, which was approved by the Cabinet in August 2021. The Chief Minister later nominated Kaushik Reddy as MLC under MLA's quota in December 2021. The Governor's decision to set up 'grievance box' at Raj Bhavan from January 2022 to enable people to lodge complaints and grievances further widened the gap between the Chief Minister and the Governor.

Following this, the Chief Minister skipped Republic Day celebrations at Raj Bhavan on January 26 this year. He also skipped official Ugadi celebrations held at Raj Bhavan in April. Later the tussle between the Governor and the Chief Minister further intensified with the Governor complaining to the Centre over protocol violations by the state government during her visits to districts.

The Governor also launched ‘Praja Darbars’ at Raj Bhavan from June this year to enable people to air their grievances, which further soured relations between the Chief Minister and the Governor.

Against this backdrop, the Chief Minister visited Raj Bhavan in June to attend the swearing-in-ceremony of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan as the Chief Justice of Telangana High Court. The Chief Minister had a high tea with Governor and Union minister G. Kishan Reddy later which triggered speculation that the former would attend events at Raj Bhavan in future.

But all the speculation proved wrong with the Chief Minister skipping the "At Home" event again at Raj Bhavan on Monday, which has special significance this year as it marks the diamond jubilee celebrations of Indian Independence.