Senior Congress leader V Hanumantha Rao today slammed his former party colleague from Andhra Pradesh, TDP leader and former MP J C Diwakar Reddy, for the latter's criticism of the Congress leaders in Telangana.
Rao condemned the "objectionable" remarks made by Reddy about party president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, and asked the TDP leader to stick to commenting on the politics of his own state instead of becoming a "stooge" of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao.
Referring to the leader's reported comment that the party's candidate for the Nagarjuna Sagar by-election, K Jana Reddy, would face defeat, VHR mockingly asked whether Reddy was an astrologer who had foreseen the Congress' future trajectory in Telangana. He then warned the former MP that the party's leaders and workers in the state would not take kindly to such comments, and asked him to refrain from saying such things in the future.
The tirade is a result of the comments Diwakar Reddy made yesterday when he
met several leaders of the Congress unit in Telangana, including Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, T Jeevan Reddy and Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy.
Ruing the fate of the Congress, he had said, "It is unfortunate that India's grand old party has lost its sheen, and no longer enjoys the mass support it once did. Its repeated losses in elections across the country are also saddening."
The former MP also reportedly told the leaders that the party would never be strong enough to defeat CM KCR.