Poll fever: Sonia Gandhi to release Congress election manifesto for Telangana on Sept. 17

HYDERABAD: Former All India Congress Committee (AICC) president Sonia Gandhi will visit Telangana on September 17, 2023, months before the crucial Assembly elections in the State.

According to sources in Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC), the former UPA chairperson will arrive in Hyderabad to release the party’s election manifesto for Telangana, which is likely to go for Assembly elections around October this year.

Buoyed by its success in neighbouring Karnataka, the Congress is nursing high hopes of repeating the same in Telangana. The grand-old party is also seemingly ahead of the BJP in the perception battle where it considers itself, and not the BJP, as a potent alternative to the BRS in the State.

In its efforts to cash in on this prevailing mood and add more muscle to its campaign for a positive image ahead of the elections, the Congress has been planning a series of meetings, featuring the key members of the Gandhi clan. Only on Sunday, July 2, 2023, the party organised a mammoth public meeting in the name of Telangana Jana Garjana in Khammam where party’s national leader Rahul Gandhi announced a few sops for the underprivileged.

In what he described as the ‘Khammam Declaration’, he announced that the Congress, if voted to power, would give a Rs 4,000 monthly pension to senior citizens and widows. He also declared that tribal brethren would be given ownership rights over the ‘podu’ lands that they had been cultivating.

While BRS discard Ponguleti Srinivasa Reddy formally joined the Congress during the Khammam public meeting, Jupally Krishna Rao, another leader expelled from the BRS, is expected to enter the party’s fold at a massive public meeting in his home constituency of Kollapur of Mahabubnagar district either on July 16 or 20. Congress national general secretary Priyanka Gandhi is expected to address the mammoth meeting for which plans are reportedly afoot to mobilise at least one lakh people.

This comes close on the heels of a scheduled visit to Warangal by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 8, which is certain to raise the election heat in the State.