HYDERABAD: As it squares up to Jagan Mohan Reddy in the forthcoming byelections, the Congress is treading on eggshells in relation to the legacy of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. The party is torn between contrary voices within its ranks, some demanding that it cease paying obeisance to the late chief minister now that he has been named in the CBI’s chargesheet as complicit in his son’s alleged conspiracy to raise quid pro quo investments.Others in the party advocate the line that YSR did good work as a Congressman but it was his son who was the black sheep.Impaled on this dilemma, chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy is doing a tightrope walk. On Tuesday, he is said to have told a few senior ministers including Kanna Lakshmianrayana, Vatti Vasant Kumar and D Sridhar Babu that there was no question of attacking YSR in the byelection campaign. “He was our chief minister. How can we disown him?” he is reported to have said.The ministers were in fact angry with medical education minister Kondru Murali Mohan who had made a statement to the media that dalits had received a raw deal during the YSR dispensation.Murali Mohan is reported to have explained that he meant no disrespect to the late CM but was only trying to say that dalits are better off under Kiran Kumar Reddy. Mirroring the support for YSR in the Congress, Lakshminarayana told Express, “How can we do away with YSR? He was our leader and was our chief minister.It is not possible.” The chief minister is understood to have said that he would remove the ambiguity vis a vis YSR in a couple of days.But leaders opposed to YSR, such as V Hanumantha Rao, mince no words on the need to dump the YSR legacy. “We should go after both of them. How could the son have earned millions without his father’s help?” he asked. He dismissed the argument that this tar the entire Congress government led by YSR. “The CBI is investigating the roles of YSR and Jagan Mohan Reddy. It will also decide who in the government were guilty,” Hanumantha Rao said. He wants the Congress to come out of the YSR shadow and approach elections using the names of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.PCC president Botcha Satyanarayana has been aggressive in attacking Jagan but does not say a word against YSR. In private, he too argues that it is time the Congress got rid of the YSR fixation. “These byelections will be fought without YSR’s photo just as we did in Kovur,” Satyanarayana is quoted as having said in a private talk. The confusion over the line the party should take was evident in MLA Anam Vivekanda Reddy’s words: “We are not the political heirs of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. We are heirs of the Congress. The party made me municipal chairman and helped me in my election as an MLA thrice. I owe a lot to the Congress,” he said but would not damn Rajasekhara Redddy openly.
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