Kurnool, May 15: Trouble has broken out for Chief Minister K Rosaiah in Kurnool just on the eve of his visit to the district with the local MP Kotla Suryaprakash Reddy and minister Silpa Mohan Reddy teeing off on a bitter feud. The spat almost exactly reprises the tiff between Guntur MP Rayapati Sambasiva Rao and Industries Minister Kanna Lakshminarayana in Guntur district just ahead of a chief ministerial visit there last week.
Kurnool MP Kotla Suryaprakash Reddy called a news conference at his residence here on Friday and fired a volley against Mohan Reddy, accusing him of ganging up with TDP leaders and harming the Congress party in the district. Suryaprakash Reddy sought Silpa’s sacking from the cabinet.
Suryaprakash, son of former chief minister K Vijayabhaskar Reddy, called Silpa a TDP stooge and accused him of cuddling up with Balanagi Reddy, the TDP MLA for Mantralayam, to the detriment of Congress interests in the district.
The Chief Minister is scheduled to attend a mass marriage ceremony which Kurnool MLA TG Venkatesh is organising on the occasion of his birthday tomorrow. The MP has said he brought the minister’s deeds to the notice of the Chief Minister as well as Sonia Gandhi. It is being watched keenly how Rosaiah will be able to bring about a rapprochement between Suryaprakash and Silpa.
Suryaprakash’s gambit is thought to be to show Silpa in a poor light in the eyes of the Chief Minister, who has been having a hard time at the hands of Jagan Mohan Reddy’s supporters in his cabinet. The Kotla camp’s calculation is that the Chief Minister might be encouraged to drop Silpa, a Jagan Mohan Reddy camper, from the cabinet because he has a ready replacement in his own loyalist, Venkatesh. Silpa did not react to Suryaprakash Reddy’s outburst. ‘‘I want Suryaprakash Reddy to decide for himself whether it was proper for him to say what he has said about me.
I am leaving it to his wisdom. I do not want to make any comments on the MP,’’ he said
–Agencies