No committee set up to settle succession issue in Andhra, Congress says

The Congress party has clarified that no three-member committee has been formed to appoint a successor to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.

Photo: Jagan Mohan Reddy

Rumors were doing the rounds that Pranab Mukherjee, Digvijay Singh and M Veerappa Moily were to go to Hyderabad to sort out the succession issue.

AICC General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi said Digvijay Singh went to Hyderabad to offer condolences becuase he was unable to attend YSR’s funeral.

The Congress high command is firm that no discussion on the succession issue would take place before the one-week mourning period for YSR is over.

Even before YSR was buried on September 4, 2009, his diehard loyalists had unleashed a vehement campaign to make Jagan Mohan Reddy, YSR’s son and MP of Cudappa, the next chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.

But toeing the Congress high command line, Jagan Mohan Reddy asked his supporters not to campaign for him.

These loyalists, who launched a signature campaign, had claimed that over 120 out of the 154 Congress MLAs in the state are in favour of Jagan Mohan Reddy succeeding YSR as the chief minister.

However, the Congress high command in New Delhi was not pleased with these developments.

As a result, the YSR loyalists even failed to submit their plea to M Veerappa Moily, the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh. Moily, according to media reports, refused to entertain any such petition “in the midst of a tragedy.”

The Congress high command has not commented on the developments. The media quoted a senior leader of the party as saying: “Let the mourning period be over. Besides, we have a chief minister in place in K Rosaiah.”

In fact, political observers see the high command’s action in asking quickly K Rosaiah to take charge as the chief minister was intended to thwart lobbying for the post.

Rosaiah, aged 76, and who has been a minister in many Congress-led governments in Andhra Pradesh, is considered by the high command to “represents the continuity of the YSR era” and is expected to be agreeable to almost all Congress workers and leaders in the state party.

A member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) reportedly went so far as to remark that the pro-Jagan Mohan Reddy group “could have waited at least till his funeral was over.”

This kind of lobbying, the comparisons with Rajiv Gandhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the open threats are in bad taste, the CWC member commented.

The fervent initiative to appoint Jagan Mohan Reddy as the next chief minister is being led by none other than Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, the government chief whip and a staunch loyalist of YSR.

He even took the lead in convening an “informal meeting” of the Congress Legislature Party to discuss the issue of “succession.”

Vikramarka said that it is necessary to make Jagan Mohan Reddy the next chief minister in order “to take the message of YSR forward and also to complete the
irrigation projects that are pending.”

He also argued that the 36-year-old Jagan Mohan Reddy can very well become the chief minister if A K Antony and Omar Abdullah could become chief ministers when they were in their late 30s.

Meanwhile, realtors of Andhra Pradesh, especially of Hyderabad, the capital, too are in favour of YSR’s son becoming the next chief minister since they believe, according to reports, that Jagan Mohan Reddy alone shares “his father’s passion for real estate and land.”

They fear that a “non-businessman” politician will not be unable to understand their business and its concerns.