Andhra Pradesh - Anantapur   

Congress leaders deny TDP charge

By Our Staff Reporter

ANANTAPUR, DEC. 10. The District Congress Committee (DCC) leaders today denied the charges levelled by the TDP leaders and ZPTC members that Congress leaders led by the Minister for Panchayat Raj, J.C. Diwakar Reddy, were engineering the defection of Telugu Desam ZPTC members by offering them inducements.

Talking to newspersons here, the leader of the Congress ZPTC members in the Zilla Parishad, G. Thippeswamy, the DCC secretary, V. Ramakrishna Reddy, district Youth Congress president, R. Parasuram, PCC secretary K. Vijayabhaskar Reddy and others said that there was no necessity for the Congress to engineer defections in the TDP. In fact, it was the TDP, which had already forced two Congress ZPTC members (from Amarapuram and Putlur mandals) to defect to their fold, the Congress leaders alleged. They also condemned the TDP threat to gherao Ministers, if the Congress tried to snatch any ZPTC member from the TDP and said the Congress could give a fitting reply by using democratic methods.

Giving more examples of the TDP engineering defections from the Congress, the DCC leaders sought to know on what grounds the TDP had taken the former Congress legislator from Dharmavaram, K. Suryapratap Reddy, into its fold before the Assembly elections. Similarly, the TDP had also forced the Congress MPP from Pamidi to defect to the TDP.

Leaders clarify

Further, they alleged that the TDP role in forcing the Congress candidate to withdraw from the fray in the Dharmavaram municipal elections was known to everyone. In the Anantapur civic body, the TDP had taken a Congress councillor into its fold and made him vice chairperson, they explained.

The Congress leaders clarified that the party ZPTC members had met Mr. Diwakar Reddy to complain to him that they were not getting justice in the Zilla Parishad headed by TDP. They vowed to oppose the TDP brand of "coercive and blackmail politics."

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Congress leaders deny TDP charge

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