Botcha hedges his bets on bypolls

HYDERABAD: In New Delhi for consultations with the Congress high command, PCC president Botcha Satyanarayana denied that there are any differences in the top leaders in the state, but hedged his bets on outcome of clutch of byelections coming up next month.Six seats are set for the vote in troubled Telangana and one in Coastal Andhra on March 18. They represent a challnge to the party at a time when differences between Satyanarayana and CM Kiran Kumar Reddy have been reported.Speaking to mediapersons in Delhi, Satyanarayana said his party is not overly bothered about the outcome of the results.“We will take the byelections seriously. We will go to polls with an appeal to the people to look at the performance of our welfare schemes,” Satyanarayana said.The PCC chief said there are no differences among the top leaders of the party in the state.“All of us will campaign in the byelections. Individuals are not important in our party, our ideology is,” he said.Asked about the stand of the party on issue of bifurcation, Satyanarayana parried the question and said Congress is not against Telangana or for that matter against united Andhra Pradesh.He tried to push the glare on TDP which, he said, has been changing its stance.“It keeps shifting from separate state to united Andhra Pradesh and then again back to separate state,” he said.