VISAKHAPATNAM: Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu is going all out to please Muslims, who sailed with the Congress in the 2004 elections when the Bharatiya Janata Party was his electoral ally, in a bid to win the Visakha-I Assembly constituency by-election.

At a press conference he held here on Thursday before leaving for Hyderabad after conducting a road show in the old city on Wednesday, Mr. Naidu talked a lot about the injustice being done to the Muslim community by the Congress Government and also made some Muslim leaders sit along with him. A couple of State party leaders had to vacate their seats for the sake of Muslim leaders. Mr. Naidu fielded S.A. Rehman, former MLA, as the party candidate for the by-election against Congress' Dronamraju Srinivasa Rao. At the press conference, some Muslim leaders joined the TDP saying that they had quit Congress because it neglected their community. Mr. Naidu asked why the Congress party could not get the Constitution amended to avoid technical problems to provide 5 per cent reservation to the Muslims as it had done in the case of reviving the Legislative Council. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy were quick to respond in the case of Madiga Dandora when it threatened to lay siege to the party's plenary in Hyderabad.

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