'Sonia imposing Italian Culture in India'

After targeting almost every high profile Congress leader ever since resigning from her post, former minister Konda Surekha on Wednesday set her sights higher and trained her guns on AICC president Sonia Gandhi, opining that she was ‘incompetent and unfit’.

The staunch supporter of former Kadapa MP YS Jaganmohan Reddy, Ms Surekha demanded that Ms Gandhi should step down as the Congress president since the post was too important for an ‘incompetent and unfit’ person like her.

Dashing off a strongly worded nine-page letter, Ms Surekha accused Ms Gandhi of going back on the word she had given to the people of Telangana that a separate state would be carved out as her ‘birthday gift’ and instead setting up a ‘useless’ Panel, the Sri Krishna Committee to delay the issue.

Ms Surekha also alleged that Ms Gandhi was responsible for the spate of suicides, particularly by students suicides who were too distraught by the delay over the formation of the Telangana state. The former minister alluded that Ms Gandhi had imposed an `Italian culture’ on the people of India, by ‘force’.

Continuing her rant against the Congress president, the rebel MLA accused Ms Gandhi of ‘playing dirty politics and managing to remain at the helm of the party by doling out positions and money to sycophants in the party,’ Ms Surekha said that the people of the country would sooner than later throw the UPA Chairperson out of the Congress after being disgusted with her ‘dirty manoeuvrings.’

In her harshest barb, Ms Surekha opined that the soul of ‘former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi would be thrashing in turmoil over Ms Gandhi’s ‘brash politicking’’.

The former minister also turned her attention to the continued oral onslaught by Congress leaders and workers against Mr Jaganmohan Reddy and warned that the Kadapa leader’s loyalist would not lets matters pass without passing on rejoinders. She said that the rhetoric against Mr Jaganmohan Reddy must end.

Referring to the Praja Rajyam Party merger with the Congress, Ms Surekha reminded that Mr Chiranjeevi had charged the ruling party of rampant corruption and had even exhorted his workers to ‘disrobe the corrupt Congress leaders’. She wondered where Mr Chiranjeevi’s ethics and noble intentions had vanished. In a more personal attack on the PRP chief, Ms Surekha reminded that his daughter’s love marriage was opposed by the former film actor, who had on the other hand launched his party on the plank of social justice.

Ms Surekha’s venom spewing spree came close on the heels of a similar attack by Congress Working Committee member G Venkatswamy against the Congress president. She also demanded that the Congress High Command should ask Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy to call for fresh elections since it has unstinted faith in his efficiency and capabilities.