The decision of Congress bosses Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi to abstain from attending the funeral of veteran Congress leader and former Union minister S Jaipal Reddy on Monday upset many party leaders in Telangana.
Both Sonia and Rahul had sent their condolence messages to the bereaved family members of Jaipal Reddy and deputed senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mallikarjun Kharge for the funeral.
Even former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and several senior colleagues like Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh did not attend the funeral.
The mother-son duo did not even consider coming to Hyderabad to pay floral tributes to Jaipal Reddy.
“When former chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy died, they came all the way to Hyderabad to pay tributes. But, they did not want to see even the face of Jaipal Reddy. May be, they have a contempt for Telangana leaders,” a Congress leader from Telangana said.
He pointed out the ill-treatment meted out to former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao by Sonia and Rahul.
“May be they did not want to see the Samadhi of PV on the Necklace Road, besides which Jaipal Reddy was cremated,” he said.
Apparently, Sonia and Rahul was not happy with Jaipal Reddy, who did not mince words while criticizing the policies of the Congress high command.
“He had advised Sonia to declare Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao as the chief ministerial candidate in 2014 in order to merge the TRS with the Congress. But she ignored his suggestion and the party had to pay a penalty for the same,” the Congress leader said.