HYDERABAD: A day ahead of their visit to New Delhi for a meeting with party high command, both chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and PCC president Botcha Satyanarayana are understood to be busy sharpening their arguments against each other in the wake of reports that the leadership is contemplating changes in the party setup to face effectively the byelections to 18 Assembly seats which are round the corner. Kiran Kumar Reddy who was away in Tirupati on Tuesday, cut short his programme and arrived in Hyderabad early. He went to Tirupati along with Rajya Sabha member Chiranjeevi on Monday, where the public meeting which he addressed turned out to be a damp squib with people leaving the venue in the middle of the meeting. He barely spoke for a few minutes. The meeting was supposed to be the take-off point for election campaign for Tirupati Assembly seat which Chiranjeevi had vacated.Meanwhile, Botcha Satyanarayana did not stir out of home on Tuesday. His comrades-in-arms--deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha and health minister DL Ravindra Reddy--drove to him and discussed the line that Botcha should take to stymie the plans of Kiran Kumar Reddy when he meets with party top leaders on Wednesday.Botcha’s new friend, Karimnagar MP Ponnam Prabhakar, came to his defence on Tuesday by accusing Kiran Kumar Reddy of using the ACB to tarnish the image of Satyanarayana. “Payment of bribes to officials and politicians by liquor syndicate organisers is nothing new. It is there for 50 years. It is not proper for the chief minister to use the ACB against Botcha,” Prabhakar, who belongs to Gouda community which is into liquor business traditionally, said.In another interesting development, former PCC president D Srinivas met party president Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi. The running feud between Botcha and Kiran Kumar Reddy is understood to have figured in the talks that he had with her. However, Srinivas denied having raised the issue. “It does not concern me. The party leadership would deal with it. I only told her what could be done to improve the image of the party.” But he would not say what he had suggested. Asked whether there was any indication of sweeping changes in the party setup as being talked about, he said, “There was no such indication.” The latest bout of shadow boxing between Kiran Kumar Reddy and Botcha Satyanarayana began when ACB inspector Ganesh served a legal notice on ACB SIT chief K Srinivasa Reddy for abusing him and asking him to send a report damning Botcha Satyanarayana in connection with illegal liquor business in Vizianagaram district.After Botcha Satyanaryana got to know about it, he reportedly sent a letter to the party president, appending the legal notice, in which he tried to establish that Kiran Kumar Reddy was using the ACB to settle political scores with him. Not to be outdone, Kiran too is reported to have sent a note to the party leadership telling them that the ACB investigated that a large number of liquor shop licences--over 100--in Vizianagaram district were held by those who possessed white ration cards.
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