Published Jun 29, 2026 | 11:50 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 29, 2026 | 11:50 AM
All is not well between Uttam Kumar Reddy, Revanth Reddy and Mahesh Goud. (Collage)
Synopsis: Chief Minister Revanth Reddy is insisting that he has the backing of the Gandhi family. But the reality within the Telangana Congress is quite different. Private surveys flagging grave concerns is another cause for worry. Interestingly, three of his ministers have been summoned by the AICC. What is brewing?
The Telangana Congress is a cauldron of simmering discontent. But Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy believes, and strongly, that he will not get burned. On the contrary, he thinks he can turn the heat in the direction of his detractors in the party and the government.
Visits of individual ministers to Delhi for a tete-a-tete with the Congress central leadership, an open rebuff by the Chief Minister to a senior minister at a Cabinet meeting and an unseemly clash between Revanth Reddy and PCC president Mahesh Kumar Goud are just samples of the Congress kettle reaching the boiling point.
The lid is still intact, though no one is sure how long it will remain so before the boiling water spills over.
Over the past fortnight, at least three senior ministers made unscheduled visits to Delhi, reportedly on being summoned by the AICC. The three are: Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, Irrigation and Civil Supplies Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy and IT Minister D Sridhar Babu.
While one camouflaged it by combining official business, the other preferred to travel to Delhi via Chennai to avoid undue attention. South First could not independently verify what transpired between the ministers and the AICC functionaries, though it appears that the discussions were basically aimed at assessing the situation on the ground as the party government completes the first half of its tenure.
Also Read: Will the Congress be felled by weaponisation of its own six guarantees in Telangana?
The visits happened amid unsavoury developments. At the informal meeting of the Telangana Cabinet held on June 18, the Chief Minister apparently lost his cool with Uttam Kumar Reddy for the bad press the government received over the procurement of paddy.
“Were you sleeping at the wheel?” was the tone of Revanth Reddy as he chided Uttam, senior in terms of standing in the Congress. With farmers endlessly waiting with heaps of paddy, the Opposition parties pounced on the government for the tardy procurement process.
Lack of vehicles and godowns were cited as some of the excuses, while the Chief Minister felt that schools, closed for summer vacation, could have been temporarily used for the storage of paddy.
A contender for the post of Chief Minister, Uttam Kumar Reddy is known for the midnight letters he drafts to the high command at regular intervals with a litany of complaints. Most of them come back to Revanth Reddy with a “FYI” tag.
Revanth campers believe that the other senior, Bhatti Vikramarka, has destroyed himself in the two-and-a-half years since the party came to power. His standing is said to have gone down in the eyes of central leadership thanks to allegations surrounding his ministry, Finance, over the release of payments and the scandals surfacing in the Singareni Collieries, the coal-mining PSU giant. There are not many party MLAs who have good things to say about him.
Sridhar Babu, seen as clean and efficient, is the lone Brahmin in the party flock and fully understands his limitations. He never sought to project himself as bigger than what he is and is happy playing the role of a mediator between the Chief Minister and his ministers when required.
The less said, the better about other ministers, with dossiers getting built against each of them as they are busy making hay while the sun shines. In other words, none of them can pose any challenge to Revanth Reddy. In fact, at the informal Cabinet meeting, many of them traded charges against each other, a scenario that would have surely pleased Revanth Reddy.
Even as the ministers are at loggerheads and not two of them on the same page, PCC president Mahesh and the Chief Minister reportedly got into a rather distasteful argument on one of their recent visits to Delhi.
Revanth, who played a key role in the appointment of Mahesh as PCC chief, believes that the latter is now working against his interests and questioned him about the same when the two met privately. Mahesh retorted by pointing to stories that emanated against him in media outlets considered close to the Chief Minister.
As the argument intensified, a recently elected MP, who was waiting outside the room where Mahesh and Revanth were closeted, went in and brought down the temperature.
Sections in the Congress believe that Mahesh is doing whatever he is doing with the “sponsorship or support” of the high command, which always prefers to have its own “checks and balances” strategy in place. Without a mass base and unelected to the Assembly, Mahesh rued with his supporters that the “high command wants to encourage me, but I don’t have the stature.”
That said, he is taking a line independent of the Chief Minister on quite a few issues and sometimes differing in public too, irrespective of whether he is the beneficiary in the end.
What is also enabling Mahesh is the stance of AICC general secretary for Telangana Meenakshi Natarajan. She and Revanth have not been on good terms, and Meenakshi is said to have developed a parallel intelligence network, which is keeping a close surveillance on the decisions being taken by the Chief Minister.
Revanth Reddy, however, remains unruffled. The Chief Minister is of the firm view that he has the backing of the Gandhi family, both Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and his sister, Priyanka Gandhi, and there is little his foes can do.
Revanth’s opponents, however, argue that he is only displaying a sense of overconfidence. He has been shooting himself frequently with his utterances, which are not in line with the party’s philosophy. They say the high command has already begun the process of “sandwiching” him by its choices in the party and the government.
Recent private mood surveys by research agencies, to which South First had access, have not thrown up positive news for Congress. The Opposition Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi (BRS) is way ahead with the BJP in the second position as the Congress got pushed to third place.
While it is more than possible that the BJP could improve its position as the elections inch closer and give a tough fight to the BRS, the current situation does not seem to offer hope for the Congress to remain a strong contender to retain power.
Also Read: Are thirty-seven per cent of voters in Telangana suspect? Seriously!
(Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)
