Even after spending nearly 50 years in Indian politics, Sudini Jaipal Reddy finds himself at a crossroad weeks ahead of a general election.
Division within the Congress and the political reorganisation in Andhra Pradesh has resulted in Reddy being driven out of his Parliamentary constituency for the second time. Reddy is now at the mercy of the high command as his proposal to contest from the Miriyalaguda constituency in Telangana's Mahbubnagar district is under consideration.
Reddy has a long connection with Mahbubnagar district; born in its Maadgula village, he won his maiden election from the district's Kalwakurthy seat in the Andhra assembly election in 1969. In 1998, he launched his Parliamentary innings from the same district.
In 1999 however, Reddy had to change his constituency to the Miriyalaguda constituency, which he won again in 2004. In the next general election though, he had to again change his constituency as the Miriyalaguda seat was swallowed up due to delimitation. So in 2009, he contested from Chevella. This time though, he is not keen to contest from Chevella as his chances of winning are slim because former Congress leaders from Chevella and former home minister, Sabita Indra Reddy, and her son Karthik Reddy, have joined the TRS; Indra Reddy is expected to contest the seat on a TRS ticket.
This is why he has proposed contesting from Mahbubnagar, which is currently represented by TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao. Even in Mahbubnagar, Reddy will face a stiff fight against Rao, who championed the cause of a separate state of Telangana.
Reddy, who is inflicted with polio, remained neutral throughout the Telangana movement. He failed to see eye-to-eye with other Congress leaders campaigning for Telangana. At the height of the agitations, Reddy had said that the Telangana movement and bitterness was really about Hyderabad and not about water or power. Hyderabad was the bone of contention, he claimed. "How can we supply Hyderabad weather in Vijayawada? Actually, Hyderabad is not only about property, but the Telugu people love Hyderabad. Did the Gujaratis leave Mumbai when Gujarat was created out of Maharashtra as was feared? In fact, they have only increased in number in Mumbai," he had said then.
Even though he remained invisible throughout the GoM meetings, Reddy played an instrumental role in retaining Hyderabad as the joint capital of the two states. Later, he refused an offer to head Telangana at a time when former chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy was in exit mode. "All Jaipal wanted was the high command to appoint him as Telangana CM, and is now hoping to become the first CM of the new state of Telangana," said K Jana Reddy, a former minister who is bitter about not being made Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee chief, and who has been opposed to Reddy for a long time.
Hailed as a non-controversial Telangana leader in the Congress, 72-year-old Reddy has been a high command man from the beginning. For this, he has been rewarded with various cabinet positions, from HRD and petroleum to science and technology.
Known to have a sharp tongue, Reddy was shifted from the oil ministry after it imposed a fine of Rs7000 crore on Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries for a sharp drop in production of gas and for violations mentioned in 2011 CAG report. It is said that he paid the price for not approving Reliance's $7.2 billion deal with BP. Reddy, though, remains nonchalant about such developments — whether they are in Delhi or Hyderabad. "I serve the party and I accept its leadership without any questions," Reddy has often said.
It is this attitude of Reddy's — being a silent spectator — for which many call him the "PV Narasimha Rao of the Sonia regime". Rao imbibed this quality during Indira Gandhi's regime in the 1980s. "Both the Telagnana Congress leaders (Rao and Reddy) had one common quality — the tenacity to survive and ability to adjust to the changing political conditions in the party and the country," said another senior Congress MP, who never got a ministry despite being an MP for five terms because of criminal cases.
But Reddy was not always a mute spectator. The Osmania University post-graduate was a vocal critic of the Congress during the emergency and even contested against former prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1980 from Medak. He also criticised Rajiv Gandhi and the Bofors scam when he was leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha in 1991-92; at the time he was with the Janata Party. Reddy joined the Congress in 1999 after the Janata Dal disintegrated.
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