Former finance minister Anam Ramnarayan Reddy and his brother Vivekananda Reddy are all set to join the Telugu Desam party on Sunday. They will join the party in the presence of TDP president and chief minister Chandrababu Naidu in Vijayawada. Anam brothers, who have not been active in Congress ever since the party lost in 2014 elections, are set to take their party membership in a public meeting being organized at A- convention centre in Vijayawada. Chief minister Chandrababu Naidu is going to address the public meeting while taking them into the fold of ruling party.
The public meeting is going to be a show of strength of Anam brothers. According to sources about 1500 followers from Nellore district are also joining the party along with their leaders.
Anam brothers enjoyed the power during the 10 year Congress-rule in united Andhra Pradesh and Ramnarayana Reddy had been the minister in the cabinet of YSR, Rosaiah and Kirakumar Reddy. At one point of time, Ramnarayana Reddy’s name was also considered for the post chief minister when the Congress high command thought of changing Rosaiah as chief minister. Though Kirankumar Reddy won the race, party did not allow him to disturb the cabinet arrangement.
The talk among the Congress circles is that Naidu wants to admit more Reddys into TDP in order to disprove the charge that TDP is a Kamma party. They say Anam brothers’ joining the party is only a beginning, TDP is in touch with many more Reddys in Rayalaseema, who are now in Congress and opposition YSR Congress. Sources in the TDP said some MLAs were not happy with YSRC boss Jaganmohan Reddy’s style of functioning and they were likely to switch over to TDP at an opportune moment. ” In YSR Congress many MLAs feel huge gap between Jagan and themselves. Jagan is not accessible to the MLAs. One to one interactions are rare. TDP is carefully targeting these MLAs who are feeling choked,” sources said.
Anam’s may pave path for other MLAs and other senior leaders to join the TDP.
