Loyalists Urge Sonia To Appoint Interim Congress President To Resurrect Party

Hyderabad, July 17 (Maxim News): The Telangana State Congress leaders on Wednesday wrote an open letter to party supremo and CPP leader Sonia Gandhi pleading with her to put in place an interim Congress president to install confidence in the party workers all over the country.

In the letter, they stated that people of Telangana were able to realize their long-cherished dream for a separate State only because of your magnanimous and statesmanship decision but unfortunately the TRS capitalized on this and the party lost the 2014 Assembly elections. “After over four years of failed promises and misrule, people of Telangana were disenchanted with the TRS.

However, we could not capitalize on this in the Assembly elections because of many lost opportunities to reach out to the people over the years and gross mismanagement of the process of electioneering at the State level, including encouraging parachuters and we ended with lesser number of MLAs demoralizing the party cadres”, they added.

They also said winning three seats in the Lok Sabha elections this year was not going to be a consolation as the party lost a lot of space to BJP, which won four MP seats in the State and lost security deposits in over 100 Assembly seats in December 2018 polls.

“The decision of Rahul Gandhi to step down as party president has further demoralized the rank and file. His reluctance to relent on his decision has created a vacuum in the organizational structure for too long, giving ammunition to our political adversaries. The spate of desertions from the party had its own impact as well. It is in this background that some of us, who are committed and senior Congress loyalists have come together, as the “Congress Loyalists’ Forum” having taken note of the sentiments of the party’s rank and file. We strongly feel that it is time to take serious steps to rejuvenate their emotions to strengthen the party at this critical juncture to be better prepared to take on the challenges confronting the nation”, they said.

The signatories of the letter are: Marri Shashidhar Reddy, former vice-chairman of NDMA, M Kodanda Reddy, former MLA & All India Kisan Congress vice-president, B Kamalakar Rao, former MLC, V Hanumanth Rao, former PCC president, S Chandrasekhar, former minister, A Shyam Mohan, TPCC Intellectual Cell chairman and G Niranjan, former chairman of AP Khadi Board. (Maxim News)