PNS|Hyderabad
Suspended BRS leader Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy said that he is joining the Congress only to defeat BRS President Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in the upcoming TS elections and made it clear that he is not expecting any posts or business favours in return. Addressing the media after meeting Rahul Gandhi on Monday in New Delhi, Ponguleti said that people elected KCR by not voting for the Congress which gave Telangana state. But KCR did not fulfil the people’s aspirations, he said.
Ponguleti said that KCR is an expert in juggling words and so he had decided to join a strong party like the Congress to defeat KCR. He said that KCR has been duping the public with his cleverly conceived schemes.
He said that people have seen how KCR has been behaving after coming to power. The BRS government failed to fulfil the assurances it had given regarding water, funds and jobs. Posts are not important for leaders but self-respect is important. The self-respect of the Telangana people was destroyed by the BRS after it came to power, Ponguleti said.
“Jupally and I organised Atmeeya Sammelans in the past few months at many places. I conducted surveys on the state’s political conditions and I found that the anti-government vote is one-sided. We thought of floating a new political party. But we realised that anti-government votes would split if a new party is floated and so we did not float a new party. We discussed our future course of action with intellectuals. They said that we must join an existing party instead of floating a new political party. So we decided to join the Congress,” he said.
Ponguleti said that the political graph of the Congress rose after Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and that it jumped again after the Congress victory in Karnataka. The BJP is losing ground by the day, he said.
“After checking all equations we decided to meet Rahul Gandhi. I know that I will face trouble if I join the Congress as it is not in power in the State or at the Centre. In fact, problems have already started for me,” he said.
Ponguleti said that Sonia Gandhi gave the Telangana state knowing fully well that the Congress will lose Andhra Pradesh. The Congress would have come to power in Telangana in 2014 if they had told people some magic words. But KCR came to power a second time saying magic words. So, the people of Telangana are still indebted to Sonia, he said.
He said that he will join the Congress on July 2 at the huge public meeting being held in Khammam. The public meeting will be bigger than the BRS’ Formation Day meeting, he said.
