Passport scam 'blow' to Telangana movement

Hyderabad, May 6: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti(TRS), already facing the problem of dissidence, is in deep trouble with its MPs and MLAs named by passport racket kingpin Md Rasheed in his confessional statement to the police.

The movement for separate Telangana is likely to suffer at least for the time being, as the fledgling party headed by former Union Labour Minister K Chandrasekara Rao will be spending its energies to arrest the political fallout of the revelations made by Rasheed against, among others, the supremo's personal assistant Ajit Reddy, loyalists T Madhusudana Reddy, party MP from Adilabad and Ravindra Naik, party MP from Warangal.

The TRS Chief and Mr Narendra, who had merged with the TRS the Telangana Sadana Samiti launched by him after quitting the Bharatiya Janata Party, commanded equal status in the party and jointly toured the region, propagating the cause of the formation of Telangana state.

In an attempt to settle scores with Mr Narendra, former Union Minister of State for Rural Development, Mr Rao has suspended the former from the party for his alleged involvement in the scam soon after the international human trafficking racket involving BJP MP from Gujarat Babubhai Katara came to light and before the dramatic surrender of Rasheed on May 3.

Hitting back at Rao, Mr Narendra, a friend-turned-foe even while denying his involvement in the racket claimed that Mr Rao had hatched a conspiracy to sideline him from the party.

Echoing Mr Narendra's version, TRS legislator S Bapu Rao, against whom the police had registered a case in connection with the fake passport fraud, claimed that his name had been dragged into the fraud as he opposed the leadership of Mr Rao.

UNI