Saturday, October 4, 2008

Ysr Unstoppable As Opp Falls Apart



Ysr Unstoppable As Opp Falls Apart
Hyderabad: With the so-called opposition within the Congress and the opposition political parties in the state in disarray, a firmly-in-command chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy is said to have ruled out the much-awaited cabinet expansion as well as appointments of chairmen to the state corporate bodies. And no one dares complain.According to sources, there was pressure on the chief minister before the byelections in May this year to accommodate several dissenting voices from the Telangana region as well as new faces in the legislative council in the cabinet. “The TRS had challenged the CM, and expectations before the poll results was that the Congress many not do well and it would be necessary to quieten the Telangana Congress voices by providing cabinet berth,” one YSR loyalist said. Not only did that not happen.Even the threats of taking independent decisions by PCC president D Srinivas, after he took over the reins, disappeared into thin air.“DS hoped to prop up the unhappy seniors of the Telangana Regional Congress Coordination Committee (TRCCC) against the CM and wage a proxy war. Now, the state Congress chief is not even in a position to revamp the PCC, something he threatened long ago,” the CM loyalist said.If these were not enough to cement the hold of YSR on the state affairs, the UPA government at the centre triumphed at the trust vote in which a role of Rajasekhara Reddy was speculated. Not only that, opposition leader and TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu had to face several setbacks such as losing trust vote in which he played a key anti-government role, defying of party whip by two of his own MPs, and desertions at the top including T Devender Goud and C Ramchandraiah.As a result, the opposition is in disarray. “The TSR is still to recover from the bypoll rout. Devender Goud has ended up in political wilderness. The left parties are on the backfoot and megastar Chiranjeevi’s ponderings on the big step seems to have only increased,” a Congress leader said, and added that in the state only one camp rules the roost and that is of YSR’s.According to the sources, it is in these circumstances that the chief minister has decided not to disturb the existing set-up as doing so would invite problems. “There will be no cabinet expansion and nor would the chairmanships of corporations be filled up. It is time to concentrate on the election year and the focus of the state government and the CM is on the various development programmes,” said the leader.It is because of the sudden strengthening of the CM that Gandhi Bhavan, the state Congress headquarters, is deserted. “No senior party leader wants to be seen as being in the camp of D Srinivas. And those who make regular noises, like Telangana leaders M Satyanarayana Rao, U Purushottam Reddy and others, have been silenced. And the high command is firmly behind the CM,” said a leader.