Jaganmohan and (below) Chavan

Hyderabad, Nov. 2: The Congress high command today clarified it was not in alliance talks with Chiranjeevi’s party for this month’s Hyderabad civic polls, apparently under pressure from the Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy camp.

The faction, which suspected that the alliance plans were meant to undermine late chief minister Y.S.R. Reddy’s son, saw the denial as a shot in the arm for its campaign against the rival camp led by chief minister K. Rosaiah.

Veerappa Moily, the AICC general secretary in charge of Andhra affairs, told a news conference in Delhi that there were no plans for an alliance with the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP). “All reports (about tie-up talks) are wrong.”

Moily’s denial came hours after state Congress chief D. Srinivas said in Hyderabad that the party was looking at a tie-up with the PRP, which has 18 MLAs, till the 2014 Assembly elections.

The immediate aim, though, was to seal an understanding for the November 23 elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.

But Jaganmohan’s loyalists kept up the pressure. Not long before Moily’s statement, home minister Sabita Indra Reddy publicly declared that Jaganmohan should “become chief minister for the good of the state”.

Later, half-a-dozen ministers, 12 MLAs and two MPs loyal to Jaganmohan met to chalk out the course of action if the alliance was finalised.

The Rosaiah camp, which was pushing for the alliance along with Srinivas, was upset by the sudden change of tack and tried to argue that the high command, not the state leaders, wanted the alliance.

“It was the high command’s emissaries, Ahmed Patel and Veerappa Moily, who had directly opened talks with the Praja Rajyam leaders, not the state unit,” said a close aide of Srinivas.

An upset Rosaiah put off all his official engagements and cancelled a meeting with Chiranjeevi scheduled late this evening.

Pro-alliance leaders like Congress Working Committee member K. Keshava Rao, senior minister Botsa Satyanarayana and Srinivas felt a tie-up with the PRP would help the Congress win back the support of the influential Kapu community in coastal Andhra. The Congress’s votes in these areas had fallen in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.