VIjayshanti: New threat

Hyderabad, April 25: She had acted as a Telengana woman who leads an anti-liquor agitation in the 2002 hit, Osai Ramulamma. Vijayashanti is back to playing crusader, this time in real life.

The actor-turned-BJP leader, popularly known as ?lady Amitabh?, is giving the Congress and Telengana Rashtra Samity leaders, who have been capitalising on Telengana sentiments, sleepless nights as she dangles the threat of floating a party for the region.

Her earlier efforts had been thwarted by BJP president L.K. Advani. The party had given up its pro-Telengana stance to appease the earlier Telugu Desam Party regime and suffered for it. ?The BJP was taught a lesson and it was wiped out in the Parliament and reduced to just two seats in the Assembly for its treachery to Telengana,? said senior TRS leader Nayani Narasimha Reddy.

Though she stayed put in the BJP, Vijayashanti opted out of campaigning for the last Lok Sabha elections saying she was busy shooting. However, the BJP and the Desam?s disastrous performance in the polls led to a change of heart.

The failure of the TRS and the Congress to carve out a Telengana state has given Vijayashanti, the vice-president of the BJP?s Mahila Morcha, a platform to pursue her political designs.

TRS chief and Union minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has not made much headway with the Congress. At the state level, too, TRS leaders have failed to make an impact despite six berths in the cabinet.

Rao has stayed away from Andhra Pradesh for almost three months to avoid facing the wrath of his party.

Although the cabinet sub-committee on Telengana met under the stewardship of Union defence minister Pranab Mukherjee last week, nothing tangible emerged out of it.

Vijayashanti could wean away Telengana supporters from the TRS, BJP and the Congress, and become a formidable force to lead the separatist agitation, which has been assured the support by Maoists.

But she has decided to wait till the state government?s honeymoon with the rebels is over.

Telengana activists have more faith in the actor than in ?turncoat? Chandrasekhar Rao.

?He is sitting pretty in air-conditioned rooms in Delhi while we are still slogging for rights promised by the President of India in the 1970s. We do not need such a leader or his party. We know how to struggle and make the authorities bend our way,? said Machineni Kishan Rao, who has distanced himself from the TRS.