Vijayashanti aims at Kiran Kumar Reddy, leaves meet midway

HYDERABAD: BJP leader, former MP and actress Vijayashanti on Friday left a meeting of party leaders at the BJP headquarters after Union minister G. Kishan Reddy took charge as state party president citing her “discomfort” at the presence of “those who sought to suppress the movement for Telangana”.

Viayashanti’s objection was apparently aimed at former unified Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, who recently joined the BJP, and was among the invitees to share the dais with Kishan Reddy and other senior BJP leaders at the meeting of party leaders and workers following Kishan Reddy assuming office as Telangana state BJP president.

Taking to Twitter in the evening on questions from the media on why she left the event midway were not right, she said “I left only after I met Kishan Reddy and wished him well. But being in the same place in the presence of anyone who had once said they will suppress Telangana movement with an iron foot, is discomforting. It is impossible for me to do so. And that is the reason why I left the event early.”

Kiran Kumar Reddy addressing the gathering later, said he never imagined he would be sharing the dais as a BJP member with Kishan Reddy. There was a time when he was speaking strongly in the Assembly, I told him you are behind because you are riding the bicycle (at the time when BJP was allied with the TDP in unified Andhra Pradesh). Today, from here, I promise my full support to him and will do whatever I can for the BJP. Kishan Reddy has the ability to convert the ‘josh’ Bandi Sanjay Kumar brought to the party into a strategy to get BJP into power in Telangana state.”

Kiran Kumar Reddy, the then chief minister and who was in the Congress, had vehemently opposed formation of Telangana.