Chiranjeevi

Hyderabad, June 14: Chiranjeevi can now finally call himself a Congressman, three years after he launched a party to bring the Congress down.

The Election Commission yesterday put its seal on the Praja Rajyam Party’s merger with the Congress, clearing the way for the actor-politician who has been waiting for a berth in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet or a place in the Sonia Gandhi-led organisation.

For Andhra Pradesh politics, the merger means an 18-member official cushion for the ruling Congress in a House of 294. Chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, branded inept by many partymen after recent bypoll routs, can say his party has 173 MLAs and his government is in a far more comfortable position than where it was.

From now, the Assembly Speaker will treat the 18 PRP legislators as members of the Congress and allot them seats on the treasury benches.

Sources said the merger was a good omen for the Congress, which is gearing up to act tough against breakaway leader Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, who inflicted the bypoll humiliation, and tackle the threat of the looming Telangana agitation.

Chiranjeevi acknowledged he was a Congressman now. “Although there is heartburn here and there, I, my party legislators and party cadres are happy about the merger with the Congress,” he said.

“The process for the merger and all legal formalities are complete and we are now Congressmen,” Chiranjeevi added.

But the formal nod also meant curtains for the role he had tried to cast himself in —that of another N.T. Rama Rao, an architect of Opposition unity that saw the V.P. Singh-led National Front topple the Congress at the Centre.

When he had launched the PRP in August 2008, Chiranjeevi’s plan was to topple the Congress, which he had described as the visha vata vriksham (the poison tree) of corruption.