It has now emerged that Kanna Lakshmi Narayana's much-publicized meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi was much ado about nothing.
The purpose of the meeting was not to elevate him in the party or make the chief minister.
It was part of an exercise by the party high command to rein in the Seemandhra Ministers and ask them to mobilize enough numbers to ensure passage of the Telangana bill in the State Assembly.
Sonia Gandhi is believed to have taken personal initiative to call some senior Seemandhra leaders and extract an assurance from them they would cooperate in passing the bill.
It is with this intention that Kanna and other senior Seemandhra leaders like Anam Ramnarayan Reddy and Kondru Murali were summoned to Delhi for discussions with the high command.
Sonia and her close aides are keen to get the Telangana bill passed in the Assembly so that there would be no scope for criticism in future that the Congress leadership had bypassed the state legislature body while carving out Telangana state.
They are well aware of the strong opposition and defiance being put up by the Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy who has, in fact, vowed to defeat the Telagana bill on the floor of the House and send across a strong message to the party leadership that a majority of the people in AP are opposed to the division.
The high command is also aware of the fact that the numbers in the Assembly are also stacked against Telangana statehood cause.
Hence, they have roped in senior Seemandhra leaders and gave them targets in mobilizing the support of legislators from their respective districts for the bill. If the bill is passed by the Assembly, despite Seemandhra region being in a majority, it would give moral strength to the UPA government and its pro-Telangana policy would be vindicated.
Though Kanna's meeting with Sonia had triggered speculation in political circles about his elevation in the party, the real reason was that the party wanted to extract assurance from him on mobilizing support for T-bill.
