HYDERABAD: Before the BJP could heave a sigh of relief from the party high command’s talks to appease MLA Etala Rajendar and Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy over the state unit’s leadership, Dubbak MLA M. Raghunandan Rao on Thursday kicked up a storm due to a perceived discontent over his treatment by Bandi Sanjay Kumar.
The Dubbak MLA’s ‘severe discontent’ could well upset the party’s reported plans for tweaking the BJP structure in the state if those upset are rewarded with positions of importance, which may be a poor precedent or set off a trend of other discontented leaders making demands, thereby, setting off a chain reaction.
Amid the new development, Sanjay Kumar is learnt to have expressed to his confidantes that he has been targeted ever since he took charge as the state party president by those unhappy about his elevation.
Sources close to Raghunandan Rao said that during a meeting with party national president J.P. Nadda on June 25 in Hyderabad, he made his views clear on how the party was being run and how he was sidelined by the state party leadership. Nadda had stopped in Hyderabad for a few hours on June 25 before heading to Nagarkurnool, where he addressed a BJP public meeting.
Raghunandan, during his meeting with Nadda, informed the BJP president that he had been asking for the party’s floor leader position in the Assembly, a request that Sanjay had been sitting on, even as three sessions of the Legislature went by without the party having a floor leader after D. Raja Singh was suspended by the party, sources said.
The MLA from Dubbak is reported to have made it clear to Nadda that it was his victory in the byelection from Dubbak that first injected life into the BJP in Telangana and despite him taking the lead in exposing various corrupt activities of the ruling BRS government and its leaders, the BJP did not take him seriously.
“One of the things Raghunandan is upset about is how the party’s national leadership called Rajendar and Rajgopal Reddy to Delhi for talks even as his repeated requests for a more responsible role in the party were ignored,” a source said, adding “Raghunandan has earlier asked in plain terms that he would like to be a national spokesperson for the party as there was none from the south, or a seat in the party’s national executive.”
