Gandhi Bhavan politics: Manikrao Thakre beckons, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy spurns

HYDERABAD: Disgruntled senior Congress leader and Bhongir MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy on Wednesday turned down a request from Manikrao Thakre, the new incharge of party’s Telangana affairs, to come down to Gandhi Bhavan for a meeting with him.

The AICC incharge of Telangana, who arrived in Hyderabad on Wednesday, for the first time since his appointment, reportedly spoke to Venkat Reddy and urged him to turn up at Gandhi Bhavan so that all the issues and differences could be ironed out. However, Komatireddy politely turned down the proposal by expressing his inability to come to Gandhi Bhavan. Instead, he proposed to meet Thakre somewhere outside and not at the party’s Telangana headquarters.

Komatireddy Venkat Reddy is being seen as a pariah ever since his younger brother Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy deserted the party for BJP and caused the Munugode Assembly by-election. While Venkat Reddy has been keeping away from party’s activities including the campaigning for Munugode, the party too has snubbed him by omitting the senior leader from the recently reconstituted TPCC committees.

His cold war with TPCC chief Revanth Reddy and the open verbal spat the two leaders had at the height of the Munugode campaigning only precipitated matters and widened his gap with the party leadership.

Venkat Reddy’s meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah before and after the Munugode by-election also took the strain in relations seemingly to a point of no return. Since then, it is being widely speculated that it was only a matter of time before the elder Komatireddy would follow in the footsteps of his brother Rajgopal Reddy and join the BJP fold.