Chiru, Renuka missing at Sonia meet

Actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi, Union minister Kishore Chandra Deo, Renuka Choudary and Madhu Yashki were among the notable 12 Congress MPs from Andhra Pradesh who did not attend the meeting convened by party president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday ahead of the presidential poll.

With the fear of cross-voting and invalid voting looming large, Sonia Gandhi herself took the initiative and met party MPs in batches from various states and asked them to attend the polling and vote in favour of UPA candidate Pranab Mukherjee.

However, around 12 MPs from AP did not turn up for the meeting. Former chief minister and Rajya Sabha member N Janardhan Reddy could not attend the meet due to ill-health. He took permission to vote in Hyderabad. Similarly, Lagadapati Rajagopal, who is abroad, could not make it to the meeting. Sources, however, said that those who could not make it for the meeting have already taken permission from the party high command. 

The other absentees were Saipratap, Anantha Venkatrami Reddy, SPY Reddy, Vivek and T Subbarami Reddy.

According to a senior MP, all those who could not attend the meeting on Tuesday, would be reaching the national capital on Wednesday and vote in the presidential poll.

In the meetings, Sonia asked all the MPs to take necessary precautions during voting so that no one failed to cast his or her vote for Pranab inadvertently. She told the MPs to cast their first preferential vote for Pranab and not to use their second preferential vote. Ghulam Nabi Azad, Union home minister P Chidambaram and Sonia’s political secretary Ahmed Patel were also present.

Kanumuri Bapiraju and Sarve Satyanarayana said the procedure of voting was discussed and no other issue, including Telangana came up for discussion. Congress MPs from Telangana said all of them would vote for Pranab Mukherjee and urged MPs of other parties from the region not to boycott polling. Even though Gutta Sukhender Reddy chanted “Jai Sonia, Jai Telangana” slogan at the meeting, the party president ignored it.

“As it was a brief interaction with the party president, we could not raise the Telangana issue. Moreover, the meeting was convened only to discuss party strategy on presidential poll,” said Manda Jagannadham.

Other MPs from Telangana -- Ponnam Prabhakar, Gutta Sukhender Reddy, Siricilla Rajaiah and Komatireddy Rajamohan Reddy -- also made it clear that they would vote for Pranab as they have confidence that party high command would sanction statehood for the Telagnana region soon.

Interestingly, Guntur MP Rayapati Sambasiva Rao, who had a one-on-one meeting with the AICC president after her interaction with party MPs, said he did not think the high command would take a pro-Telangana decision but had assured Sonia that he would not oppose whatever the party would decide.