Telangana BJP seniors not happy with Maheshwar Reddy’s style of functioning

Sources say State leadership was not happy with the way Maheshwar Reddy was functioning and taking independent decisions without informing them.

Hyderabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party in Telangana appears to be caught in a cold war between party State senior leaders and BJP Legislative Party Leader A Maheshwar Reddy.

Sources say State leadership was not happy with the way Maheshwar Reddy was functioning and taking independent decisions without informing them. Of late, Maheshwar Reddy has been holding press conferences at the BJPLP office on the Assembly premises, which has been objected to by a few senior leaders. They claim that Maheshwar Reddy was supposed to inform the State office bearers about his activities and press conferences so that they could inform the State leadership.

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On the other hand, Maheshwar Reddy argues that he was legislative party leader and that he has a right to hold press conferences at his will at BJLP office. The party office bearers complain that Reddy was forcing the party media cell staff to give coverage to his press conferences and statements. In fact, he has created a special WhatsApp group to invite media representatives for his press conferences and activities. This has not gone well with the State leadership.

The senior BJP leaders are of the opinion that Maheshwar Reddy was working on his personal agenda rather than peoples’ issues. “He is targeting Congress and BRS leaders keeping in mind his personal agenda. His action is causing harm to the party,” a BJP leader said.

Interestingly, not all the eight MLAs are supporting the actions of Maheshwar Reddy. Adilabad MLA Payal Shankar, Goshamahal MLA T Raja Singh, Sirpur MLA Palvai Harish Babu and Nizamabad Urban MLA Dhanpal Suryanarayana Gupta are reportedly distancing themselves from the programmes of Maheshwar Reddy.

Meanwhile, BJP State unit chief and union Coal Minister G Kishan Reddy is having a tough time handling the party MLAs, who are not happy with the way the former was treating them. Recently, seven of the eight BJP MLAs were conspicuous by their absence at the State party office- bearers’ meeting on the issue of Kishan Reddy reportedly not introducing them to new governor Jishnu Dev Varma during the sworn-in ceremony at Raj Bhavan. In order to pacify the MLAs, Kishan Reddy held a meeting with them recently.