The home minister is also scheduled to call on director SS Rajamouli and Andhra Jyothy managing director Vemuri Radhakrishna.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah. (Twitter)
After creating a flutter in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh with his stinging comments on the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSRCP government, Union Home Minister Amit Shah was all set to arrive in Telangana to address a public meeting in Khammam on Thursday, 15 June.
The meeting has, however, now been postponed, with Shah, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, focussing all his attention on the Cyclone Biparjoy that is bearing down on the Gujarat coast.
Biparjoy, which has intensified into a “very severe cyclonic storm”, is expected to make landfall in the Saurashtra and Kutch regions of the state anytime between 4 pm and 8 pm on 15 June.
The postponement of the Union home minister’s visit was announced by Telangana state BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar — whose fate Shah was expected to dwell on during his visit — on Twitter on Thursday afternoon.
Owing to severe cyclonic conditions in the West Coast, especially in the three states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan, the proposed Public Meeting of Hon’ble Union Home Minister Shri @AmitShah ji in Khammam on 15th June stands postponed.
As the NDRF teams are already…
— Bandi Sanjay Kumar (@bandisanjay_bjp) June 14, 2023
Shah’s meeting had been organised as part of Maha Jana Samapark Abhiyan of the saffron party ahead of the year-end Assembly elections in the state — and had been scheduled at a time the state unit of the party is witnessing a leadership tussle.
In fact, Amit Shah — who has been crisscrossing the country, addressing public meetings and extolling the virtues of Prime Minister Modi — was expected to deal with the leadership issue during his visit.
Shah was scheduled to land in Hyderabad on a special flight and reach Bhadrachalam in a chopper and offer special prayers at the Sri Rama temple.
From there, the senior BJP leader was to head to Khammam and attend the public meeting after garlanding former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh (undivided) NT Rama Rao.
The home minister was also scheduled to call on Bahubali creator and celebrity director SS Rajamouli and Andhra Jyothy managing director Vemuri Radhakrishna as part of his practice of calling on important people in the area he visits, before leaving for Khammam.
In fact, the BJP sent Rajamouli’s father, V Vijayendra Prasad, writer of Oscar-winning Telugu blockbuster RRR and Bahubali, to the Rajya Sabha last year.
On an earlier visit, Amit Shah met Jr NTR, one of the two heroes of RRR, and the hero of Bahubalil, Prabhas, who rose to national fame, in May last year.
This year, in March, he met actor Ram Charan and his father, Telugu cinema veteran Chiranjeevi.
Shah has been meeting the tinsel world stars, apparently looking at them through a political prism to find out if they could be of help to the BJP on the day of reckoning.
His visit was set against the backdrop of a storm in the Telangana BJP where the recent entrant into the party Eatala Rajender, who is Huzurabad MLA, is bringing pressure on the party for a change in the leadership.
He is leading a pack of leaders who had joined the party with the sole intention of defeating KCR in the next elections.
Meanwhile, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, the incumbent BJP state president, wants the status quo to continue and has several leaders, who also joined the party recently, backing him.
Eatala Rajender, who comes from an ultra-left ideology background, is a tenacious fighter and has been trying to convince the top leadership for a change in the party leadership in the state.
By doing so, Eatala Rajender was sending a message, unobtrusively though, that he should be projected as the chief minister’s candidate in the next elections, which a majority of the state leaders do not like.
The party is now caught in a cleft stick, unable to decide as both Rajender and Sanjay Kumar are important, and it cannot afford to offend either.
Waiting in the wings to benefit from the clash between the two leaders is former minister DK Aruna, who is now BJP vice-president.
BJP leaders expect to get some clarity on the line the party was going to take in regard to a rejig of the party at the state level and the line it has to take vis-a-vis the ruling BRS in the wake of doubts being expressed over the saffron party going soft on the ruling party, particularly after its fall in Karnataka elections.
The hardcore anti-BRS leaders in the BJP are waiting for clear indications that the party would go after the BRS.
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