Hyderabad, May 25: Vijayashanti, Telugu film actor and vice-president of the BJP Mahila Morcha, today joined the Telengana bandwagon.

Launching a campaign for statehood, she told a rally she would snap all relations with the BJP, which had “mortgaged the aspirations of the people of Telengana” to buy the support of the Telugu Desam.

The meeting, organised under the banner of the Vijayashanti Yuva Sena, attracted a small crowd, mainly of disgruntled Telengana Rashtra Samiti and BJP workers.

“The BJP let the Telugu Desam blackmail it to give up its campaign for a Telengana state,” she told her audience.

A hoarding in the background had the actor’s lifesize portrait in a pink dress and the slogan: “As long as Vijayashanti is with us, Telengana is ours.”

Vijayashanti visited the Telengana martyrs’ memorial in the public gardens and later garlanded the portrait of S. Narasimha Rao, who was killed at the age of 14 in police firing during the Telengana campaign in 1969.