He had rocky start in Cong,with Rajiv

One of the most admired Congress chief ministers,Y S Rajasekhara Reddy had a less than smooth relationship with the party high command....

One of the most admired Congress chief ministers,Y S Rajasekhara Reddy had a less than smooth relationship with the party high command at the start of his rise in Andhra politics and once,as the PCC chief in the mid-1980s,he even had to wait for three days to get an audience with the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

As Congress chief Sonia Gandhi led the party in showering glowing tributes on the man,who had made Andhra a Congress fort in the last few years,YSRs long-time associate M V Mysura Reddy recalls how the late leader had struggled to get an appointment with Rajiv Gandhi once.

We came to Delhi to meet Rajiv to seek the Centres aid for a railway-related project in the state. We stayed in the Andhra Pradesh Bhavan for three days,but didnt get an appointment. It was frustrating and insulting. Finally,a message was sent across that we were going to resign as there is no point in remaining in the party if a PCC president is not able to meet the PM. We were given an appointment then, he told The Indian Express.

Mysura Reddy,incidentally,had left Congress five years ago and joined the camp of Chandrababu Naidu,YSRs arch-rival. However,he continued to share a warm relationship with YSR and has fond memories of his long friendship,which dates back to 1978.

For him,YSRs death is a personal loss,ironic though it may sound since he still holds the same Reddy responsible for his exit from the Congress.

But then that is an old story for Mysura Reddy,who along with YSR were once called the two eyes of the Congress in Andhra the comrades-in-arms from Kadapa who fought their way up in the deeply divided and caste-ridden party structure.

People are now talking about the padayatra he had led in the run-up to the 2004 elections. But his first padayatra was in the early 1980s. He had organised it to highlight the backwardness of Rayalaseema region. It was the success of those early programmes that might have prompted YSR to undertake a number of mass contact drives later, he says.

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For Mysura Reddy,YSR was always a rebel who had locked horns with successive Congress chief ministers and once with former PM P V Narasimha Rao as well. But his criticisms of the Congress governments despite being a party man earned him a mass following among the youth.