Hyderabad: The delicate peace within the ruling Congress in Telangana was shattered Friday as nearly 20 MLAs, ostensibly from Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s camp, demanded the removal of minister Konda Surekha after her daughter launched a tirade against the CM and party leadership over their stated choice of candidate from her constituency in the next assembly polls.
The 20 legislators held an emergency press conference at the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) office on Friday, mounting immense pressure on the CM to sack the Minister for Endowments and Environment and Forests. They claimed the minister crossed institutional boundaries with her conduct and profoundly damaged the party’s image.
The political situation in the state escalated amid Revanth Reddy’s ongoing official trip to the United Kingdom, when prominent legislators Vemula Veeresam and government whip Beerla Ilaiah demanded “tough action” against the minister and her daughter Konda Sushmita Patel for allegedly making disparaging remarks against the CM and other leaders.
The trigger: Konda Sushmita’s comments
Konda Sushmita, the daughter of long-time Congress leaders Konda Surekha and Konda Murali, made politically explosive comments on 19 August at Geesukonda, Warangal.
The comments, made during her mother and minister’s birthday celebrations, were over Revanth Reddy’s choice of an MLA candidate for the 2028 assembly elections.
Ignited by the dispute over candidate selection for the Parkal assembly constituency, where CM Revanth Reddy recently voiced his support for the sitting MLA Revuri Prakash Reddy, Sushmita launched a scathing, direct tirade on the state’s leadership.
Sushmita is a member of the Congress party, but does not hold any official position.
Declaring herself as the “upcoming Parkal MLA”, Sushmita claimed she would contest the elections independently if the Congress denied her a ticket. She also accused the CM of developing an “arrogant” attitude, displaying tendencies of favouring Telugu Desam leaders over the Congress leaders.
She categorically called out the CM for “systematically sidelining” original Congress loyalists and Backward Class (BC) leadership, and instead transforming the Telangana Congress into TDP Congress.
“All the assembly constituencies around Parkal, including ours, were won because of the contributions made and campaigns undertaken by my family. On the one hand, the CM speaks of giving Gen Z candidates tickets to contest the Parliament elections; on the other hand, he chooses people like Prakash Reddy, who need diapers to move around,” she said, taking a dig at the 74-year-old former TDP leader.
Worse still, she levelled unverified allegations of corruption against the CM’s family, accusing his younger brother of allegedly acquiring high-value government land through a shell company. “I will expose the Rs 200-crore scam if you take action against me,” Sushmita added, to the sound of cheers and claps in the audience.
TPCC: A divided house
Sushmita’s fiery remarks have exposed the alleged camp politics in the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee, with none of the senior ministers or senior MLAs coming to Revanth Reddy’s defence.
A day after the incident, when the TPCC Disciplinary Committee head Mallu Ravi wrote to Konda Surekha demanding a response, she quickly responded, pleading for the withdrawal of a show-cause notice served on her.
However, Surekha did not condemn her daughter’s remarks, and instead said she should not be held responsible for Sushmita’s statements. “My daughter’s views are strictly personal and that holding a mother accountable for her adult child’s individual opinions violates natural justice,” Surekha said in her response.
However, MLAs close to Revanth Reddy did not seem appeased by the minister’s response and called Sushmita’s outburst “calculated”, dubbing the comments a proxy attack by the minister herself, designed to undermine the CM’s authority, and marking out the Konda family’s territory in the Warangal region.
Konda Surekha and her family have been Congress loyalists for nearly four decades, with her serving as the Minister for Women Development and Child Welfare, Disabled Welfare, and Juvenile Welfare, after the Congress won the 2009 elections in undivided Andhra Pradesh.
What has compounded the crisis in the state is Revanth Reddy’s absence, with him touring the UK, and the Congress high command not condemning Konda Surekha’s daughter’s statements.
Only the AICC in-charge for Telangana, Meenakshi Natarajan, has demanded a factual report on the breach of discipline. That the AICC top leaders have noticeably refrained from taking a public stance has also been noticed by the opposition in the state.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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