Hyderabad, January 02: In a development that might prove costly to the Congress in the Telangana region, the party high command issued a show-cause notice to IT Minister Komatireddy Venkata Reddy on Friday asking why action should not be taken against him for his scathing comments on Chief Minister K Rosaiah.
The notice was served on him, a day after Rosaiah complained to the party high command against him.
Reddy had accused Rosaiah of acting as the Chief Minister of the Andhra region, not the State and ‘‘belittling’’ the Telangana agitation by raising the spectre of the ‘‘flight of capital from the State.’’ The move by the party leadership is being viewed as an attempt to send a signal to all the other Telangana members in the Cabinet that indiscipline would not be tolerated. Though the party is fully aware of the political consequences of rubbing the Telangana ministers on the wrong side, it had to do it to rescue the Chief Minister. The show-cause notice is also being interpreted as a ploy to make Venkata Reddy fall in line. Implicit in it is the threat of being dropped from Cabinet.
For Venkata Reddy, obeying the party diktat means running the risk of ‘‘capitulating’’ to the party high command even when the party leaders take a pro- Andhra stand. Defiance would mean losing the Cabinet berth. Venkata Reddy claimed that he had not yet received the notice. The IT Minister had on Thursday refused to withdraw his resignation while almost all the other ministers from the Telangana region did.
Earlier in the day, Telangana leader and legislator R Damodar Reddy and MP and Congress Working Committee member K Keshava Rao jumped to the IT Minister’s rescue. Of the two, the most vocal was Damodar Reddy who accused Rosaiah of building a case against Venkata Reddy for standing up for the T cause and with the intention of dropping him from the Cabinet. He sent out a loud warning to Rosiah that if he dropped Venkata Reddy from the Cabinet, Telangana legislators would take the issue seriously.
Keshava Rao said Venkata Reddy’s comments did not warrant a complaint to the high command and wondered why no complained was made when Venkata Reddy used much harsher language during Jagan-for- CM campaign.
-Agencies