Internal strife in Telangana Congress turns ugly as cadre block V Hanumantha Rao’s car

ADILABAD: While Congress is already struggling a lot to keep its base intact in Telangana, after facing back-to-back debacles in various elections, internal strife has reportedly started weighing down the party leadership’s efforts.

The cold war within the grand old party camp came to the fore on Thursday as the followers of former MLC K Premsagar Rao obstructed former MP V Hanumantha Rao’s vehicle, when the latter arrived at the Mancherial Collectorate for taking part in the Praja Jana Chaitanya Yatra.

Though Premsagar has been staying away from Congress programmes, his followers arrived at the Collectorate on Thursday, around the same time that the party’s protest seeking the procurement of paddy was supposed to begin, and staged a stir. When Hanumantha Rao’s vehicle arrived at the spot, Premsagar’s followers blocked the former’s car and raised slogans against him. Party senior leaders Ramulu Naik and G Vinod were also obstructed by Premsagar’s followers.

In the meantime, VHR asked as to why Premsagar and followers were creating a ruckus when they have already made it clear that they were going to float a new party. On learning about the faceoff, police swung into action and dispersed the two groups. A Congress delegation, led by VHR, submitted a representation to Additional Collector Madhusudhan Naik urging the authorities to initiate paddy purchase at the earliest.

How it started

Premsagar Rao had about 20 days back, threatened to quit the party if his followers were not appointed to committees in the erstwhile district and at the State level. He had also given an ultimatum to the party leadership, stating that he would quit the Congress and float a new party if the State unit didn’t dissolve all the new mandal and block committees constituted recently. However, the State unit of the party reportedly neglected his ultimatum, leaving the former MLC fuming.