After an acrimonious split the first time around, united Andhra Pradesh’s last Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy rejoined the party five years ago. On Sunday he announced he quit the party once again, sending a one-line resignation letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. Reddy is likely to join the BJP, according to sources. Reddy was the Chief Minister when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government bifurcated Andhra Pradesh and created a separate state of Telangana in 2014. He was against the division of the state and opposed the move both within and outside the Assembly and became the first Congress Chief Minister in the history of the grand old party to stage a sit-in in the heart of the national capital. The demonstration was held to protest against the high command’s decision to carve out Telangana. Reddy had been appointed Andhra CM on November 25, 2010, after septuagenarian K Rosaiah, who held the fort for Congress for over a year following the death of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash in September 2009, resigned. The selection of Reddy surprised many Congress insiders at the time as he had never been a minister and was not known to be a mass leader. Political analysts at the time predicted that the cricketer-turned-politician would not remain in office for more than a few months given the fluid political situation in Andhra Pradesh on account of the Telangana agitation and the Jagan Mohan Reddy factor. Jagan, the son of Rajasekhara Reddy, was trying to assert himself within the party at the time. CM to rebel With the Congress-led government at the Centre going ahead with the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, Reddy’s position in the party also became untenable. The bifurcation cost the Congress heavily in Andhra Pradesh. It suffered a huge exodus of leaders and the party has not won a single Lok Sabha or Assembly seat in Andhra Pradesh since then. Reddy too quit the Congress in 2014 and floated his own outfit, the Jai Samaikya Andhra party. He fought the 2014 elections but failed to make a mark. In 2018, he returned to the Congress after months of negotiations. The expectation was that he would be given an important organisational role but nothing came his way. So much so that Reddy was not invited to the Udaipur Chintan Shivir last year, surprising many leaders in the party. When the Andhra unit was revamped last year, Reddy was not entrusted with any key responsibility. Kharge took a bit of a gamble by appointing Gidugu Rudraraju as the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president, replacing Sake Sailajanath. It was seen as a throw of dice as Rudraraju is Brahmin and Andhra politics is dominated by the Kamma, Reddy, and Kapu communities. Reddy was not made either a working president of the state unit or included the 18-member Political Affairs Committee, and found a place only in an APCC Coordination Committee.
