Hyderabad: After firing the first salvo against chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy at the first meeting of the Congress Coordination Committee on January 5, deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha on Monday is believed to have come down heavily on him once again, describing him as "authoritarian and anti-Dalit".
"We Dalits cannot take things lying low anymore. We will organise Dalit Sadassus and assert ourselves. As regards the Telangana movement, I have so far been gagged. From now on I will bring all Telangana forces together," Rajanarasimha told his confidants. Though Rajanarasimha's tirade went to the notice of the chief minister, he decided to play it cool and did not raise the issue either with his colleagues or with his confidants.
According to highly placed sources, Rajanarasimha, who set his sights on the chief minister's post long ago, burst out at the chief minister for the "unceremonious" dismissal of handlooms and textiles minister P Shankar Rao from the cabinet.
Though Shankara Rao is a Mala, Rajanarasimha, a Madiga, championed his cause, apparently in an attempt to use it as a weapon to target Kiran Kumar Reddy.
In fact, both Malas and Madigas, though belong to Scheduled Castes, do not see eye to eye.
According to sources, though Rajanarasimha's long-term objective is to step into Kiran Kumar Reddy's shoes, he, for the time being, is eyeing the home portfolio since he believes that the home department should be held by deputy chief minister and no one else.
Since the high command promised cabinet reshuffle before the commencement of the budget session of the Assembly, which is likely to be February 13, Rajanarasimha appears to be turning the heat on the chief minister as well as on the party high command to achieve what he is after. He is quoted as having said, "Kiran Kumar Reddy is acting like a dictator. If the lot of Dalits improves, why should it become an eyesore to him? Why should he sack Shankar Rao from the cabinet? He could have asked him to resign. Shankar Rao's sacking will cast a long shadow on the Congress. It is sure to distance Dalits from the party. Dalits will one day settle scores with the chief minister.”
He is understood to have forecast a serious crisis after the by-elections and Kiran may have to face a no-confidence motion in November.
Rajanarasimha is also understood to have taken potshots at the party high command as well.
"I had brought to the notice of AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad the way Shankar Rao has been shown the door.But there was no response from him," he said.
Azad, according to him, is more interested in spending time with industrialists than listening to the woes of the party workers. Party functionaries waited for hours for him at the Lake View Guest House but he was nowhere to be found.
He hardly spent two hours at Gandhi Bhavan, he remarked. Rajanarasimha was also unhappy over the way Kiran Kumar Reddy was governing the state. "Kiran appears to be under the impression that welfare schemes would fetch seats in elections. If it was true, the Congress should have bagged more than 250 seats in the 2009 elections," he said, underlining the need for a leader to blend flexibility with firmness in dealing with issues and colleagues.
"The CM is not above board as an administrator. There are murmurs that all is not well in the allocation of SEZs, mining leases and Jalayagnam contracts," he said, adding that as a leader too, he had failed since there was dissatisfaction among MLAs over appointing them to nominated posts.
"Though there are so many grey areas in his functioning, the high command is not taking it into consideration."
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