Will Rahul Gandhi Take Charge of Andha Pradesh Affairs?

We speculated that Mr Veerappa Moily will be discharged of Andhra Pradesh affairs sooner than later. Now we hear that Mr Rahul Gandhi is taking interest in the affairs of the Congress party in AP. He is meeting the young MLAs individually and in groups. Apparently he jokes with them, asking them if they would remain with the party or go with Mr Y S Jaganmohan Reddy. He is also making enquiries into the assets accumulated by some of the leading lights of the Jagan camp. All this goes to make us believe that he may take over from Mr Moily as in-charge of party affairs in AP.

AP is an important state for the Congress party. It will be long before the party can regain its past glory in Uttar Pradesh. It is now in the fourth position in the biggest state. It is in the third position in Bihar and Maharashtra. It is a junior partner in the coalition in West Bengal. Overall, the party is strong and growing from strength to strength in AP alone. It was largely due to Mr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s good work. The Congress can ill afford to antagonize the YSR loyalists in the party, and so they need to be won over by hook or by crook: that is precisely what the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is up to now. Building bridges with the young netas who are supporting Jagan.

For the past many years, Rahul has been taking keen interest in the affairs of the Congress party in UP, and managed to get some traction for the party. He is still at it: the Congress doesn’t want to tie up with Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party (SP). The Congress doesn’t want to play the second fiddle to anyone in their traditional bastion; they are willing to wait any number of years but want to regain power on their own. In the meantime, AP is an existing stronghold on which the Congress party doesn’t want to lose its control. It is in this context that Rahul’s involvement in the affairs of the party makes for interesting copy. Whether or not he is officially made in charge of AP affairs, he will be operating as such de facto.

The bottomline is that Mr Veerappa Moily is going to lose his job.

Postscript: A blogger need not write everyday. Like I had breakfast today (which is indeed something unusual). Now these are the kind of things that need not go into a blog. And if there isn’t anything more eventful, skip the blog for the day instead of writing that you skipped lunch (said Geoff Hart, a good friend). And talking of Confucius, Ezra Pound said:
“And even I can remember
A day when the historians left blanks in their writings”

Historians and bloggers have it easy; they can leave blanks. But I am primarily a columnist. I cannot afford to skip a column except on Sundays when the paper office is closed.

So here is a summation of things that might interest people: N Chandrababu Naidu and others have been lathi-charged (caned) by Maharshtra police. However, this is a blessing in disguise for the TDP supremo, who would love to stay out of the bypoll campaign in the Telangana assembly constituencies. Jagan is going on with his yatra and his paper reports that he is attracting huge crowds – good for him. Ashoke Chavan, the CM of Maharashtra has canceled his trip to Puttaparthi in Anantapur because the TDP workers threatened that they would block him from entering AP. Dr J Geetha Reddy hit the campaign trail in Siddipet, and said that TRS doesn’t have the strength to contest on its own, and that is why it always aligned with one or the other party (Congress, TDP, and now the BJP).