The Andhra Pradesh wing of the Congress has been plagued with issues like lack of unity and internal leadership tussles for years now, which contributed to its downfall.
Hyderabad: In 2009, 33 out of a total 42 Lok Sabha MPs from unitedAndhra Pradesh belonged to the Congress, which was one of the highest number of elected representatives from the state that the party had ever sent to Parliament.
However, at present, seven years after Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated, the party does not have a single elected representative in the state, either in the assembly or Lok Sabha. The situation in Telangana, its sister state, is no better with six MLAs and three MPs.
Since 2014, the Congress has suffered a spell of political defeats in the two Telugu-speaking states, particularly in Andhra Pradesh.
The Andhra Pradesh wing of the Congress has been plagued with issues like lack of unity and internal leadership tussles for years now. And it is these that have led to the party’s downfall, according to its own cadre.
On paper, the Congress has roughly 700 members in the state, including ground level workers, mandal-, district- and state-level leaders. However, hardly 25 per cent of them are active, party leaders, who wished to remain unnamed, told ThePrint. Even the Andhra Ratna Bhavan — the head office in Vijayawada — wears a deserted look with no party worker around.
Several leaders attributed the decline to the lack of communication between the party cadre, the two working presidents N. Tulasi Reddy and Shaikh Mastan Vali and the new PCC chief Sake Sailajanath.
“The party has two working presidents who have largely limited to their own districts, monthly coordination meetings are not held, the new PCC chief does not come to the office regularly and there’s hardly any interaction with district level leaders, which ideally is supposed to happen every month,” said a senior Congress leader, who wished to remain unnamed.
“He introduced a ‘slip system’ where if any party worker wants to meet him, he has to take a prior appointment and the name will be written on the slip and only if he agrees we can meet him,” he told ThePrint.
Another leader cited the lack of the party’s presence on the ground. “We’re totally lacking ground level presence. And instead of pushing the cadre to get onto the ground, the new PCC chief once in a Zoom meeting said that key opposition party TDP (Telugu Desam Party) is only missing from the ground, so we do not have to stress much,” he said.
A Dalit leader, Sailajanath took over the reigns of the party in January. He was a Cabinet minister in Kiran Kumar Reddy’s government and was a strong voice in pre-2014 Andhra Pradesh. However, he has maintained a low profile since the Congress’ defeat in the 2014 assembly elections
“I am aware that there is some discontent among cadre about not much communication but that is going to change. In the next six months, we’re going to strengthen our cadre and show ourselves on ground more so this tough time will continue till January,” Sailajanath told.
