Cong. placates leaders with rebel management', 11 withdraw nominations

Hyderabad: The Telangana state Congress’ political campaign for state Assembly polls, which was marred by dissent and rebellion from candidates not given tickets, seems to have got its house in order, as evidenced by the withdrawal of nominations by 11 dissenters on Wednesday.

Sources said that senior leaders, on the instructions of AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal, undertook “rebel management” by persuading dissenters to withdraw from the polls to avoid splitting votes, which would end up benefitting other parties.

Dissenters were wooed with promises of tickets for Lok Sabha elections, nominated MP and MLC posts, and other posts in the Congress government, following which they relented and assured to work for the party’s cause in their respective constituencies.

The 11 ‘rebel’ leaders to withdraw their nominations on Wednesday were Patel Ramesh Reddy from Suryapet constituency, Gangaram Soudagar from Zahirabad, Nagi Shekar from Karimnagar, Daida Ravinder from Bhongir, Gudipati Narsaiah from Thungathurthy, Batta Vijay Gandhi from Pinapaka, Dharavath Rammurthy Naik from Wyra, Solthi Kiran from Parkal, Janga Raghava Reddy from Warangal West, Kasula Balaraju from Banswada and C. Parijatha Narsimha Reddy from Maheshwaram.

Sources said that the party ramped up its placation efforts after the ruling BRS made efforts to utilise the Congress rebels to its advantage, by unofficially bringing them under the BRS fold, to split votes and mar the Congress’ prospects. However, the high command intervened to avert such a situation, they said.

In one such incident, AICC secretary Rohit Chaudhary and former MP Mallu Ravi visited Patel Ramesh Reddy’s residence in Suryapet to convince him to withdraw his nomination. A tense situation prevailed as angry supporters of Reddy tried to attack the two senior leaders — for denying tickets in the 2018 and 2023 polls — but the police brought the situation under control.

Later, Rohit and Ravi promised to nominate Ramesh Reddy for the Lok Sabha polls from Nalgonda, following which he agreed to withdraw his nomination and assured to work for the victory of party candidate Ramreddy Damodar Reddy.