Tread a different path: JP

Hyderabad Dec 28: Lok Satta Party president Jayaprakash Narayan on Monday counselled party cadre not to set their agendas going by the day’s newspaper headlines or hourly news bulletins on news channels.Addressing a meeting of party candidates who contested the 2009 Assembly elections and party leaders from districts, Narayan said true leadership lies in leading people. A political party should behave like a compass and not as a weather-wane.The Lok Satta Party did not view the current agitations for and against Telangana as a fundamental issue,he said.A threat to freedom or secularism could be a fundamental issue but the formation of Telangana or keeping the State united was just a political and administrative arrangement.It is true that people are swayed by sentiment on both sides.A mature political party should not be swayed by agitations carried on by a vocal minority to whichever region it belonged to, he said.

Dr Narayan refuted criticism in certain quarters that he had undertaken the Delhi mission as part of a secret agenda.The Lok Satta does not have a private agenda that is different from its public agenda,he said.Meanwhile, the party has decided to send a team of representatives of the three regions and all districts and municipalities, organise discussion forums and try to ascertain what their problems were and how the division of the State or failure to divide it would help them.The team will also organise gram sabhas in select villages.