Sonia junks plea to declare CM face prior to polls in Telangana

Hyderabad: AICC leader Sonia Gandhi has reportedly rejected Telangana Congress leaders’ plea to announce Chief Minister candidate before the elections. The Congress leaders belonging to BC and SC communities met Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and AICC Chief Mallikarjuna Kharge in Delhi separately and urged them to finalise CM candidates from their communities.

Sources said that the Telangana Congress leaders has been told the Congress never adopted such strategy to announce CM candidate in advance which divide voters on caste lines and affect the party winning prospects.

It is learnt that Congress senior leaders from BC community V Hanumatha Rao, Ponnam Prabhakar and others met Rahul Gandhi, Kharge and also General Secretary KC Venugopal in New Delhi during the recent visit and requested them to announce BC leader as CM candidate so that the majority backward sections will support the Congress in the upcoming assembly elections.

Another group of leaders from SC community also suggested the Congress high command SC leader as CM will help to consolidate the Dalit votes in the Assembly elections. The top leaders brought the issue to the notice of Sonia Gandhi who turned down the request from BC and SC leaders and appealed to the leaders to work hard by uniting all communities in the elections without creating any political disturbances. TPCC Chief Revanth Reddy has been asked to take special care in giving posts to the leaders and maintain proper representation of every community in the committees which are to be constituted for election needs soon.