Congress mired in ticket-selling culture, alleges MLC aspirant

Even after losing power both at the Centre and in the Telugu States, the Congress is still mired in its old Congress culture of selling tickets to partymen. When he sought the party ticket to fight the recent MLC elections, Congress leader Venkataramana Reddy of Nizamabad alleged on Saturday that the Telangana Congress leadership had demanded Rs.4 crore from him as deposit. Venkataramana Reddy said the State Congress leadership comprising Shabbir Ali, Madhu Yashki Goud and Mahesh Kumar Goud had demanded Rs.4 crore deposit if he wanted to enter the MLC poll from the local bodies constituency. Immediately he deposited Rs.2 crore to the leadership in the presence of Shabbir Ali. But the T Congress leadership insisted on having the entire amount. He did not have that kind of money and so he withdrew from the race. He denied that he had talked to the ruling TRS leadership in this regard so as to fix the T Congress leadership. Neither he borrowed a single paisa from the TRS. Detailing the reasons why he had to withdraw from the MLC poll, Venkataramana Reddy said he had written a letter in this regard to the party supreme leaders, Sonia Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, asking them to take severe action on the Telangana unit leadership for harassing him for money and forcing him to withdraw from the contest. Significantly, Shabbir Ali and Madhu Yashki belong to Nizamabad.