SIT chief transfer a peace offering

HYDERABAD: How long will the truce brought about by the Congress high command between chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy and PCC president Botcha Satyanarayana last? According to analysts, until the byelections to 18 Assembly seats.To set the state for this temporary truce, the high command persuaded Kiran Kumar, before he took the flight to Delhi, to transfer ACB special investigation team (SIT) chief K Sreenivasa Reddy, a no-nonsense police officer who is probing the activities of liquor syndicates in the state.This has soothed Botcha because Sreenivasa Reddy appeared set on getting to the bottom of the illegal activities of benami liquor licencees in the PCC chief’s native district Vizianagaram. To precipitate this sequence of events, Botcha found the legal notice served by an ACB inspector in Vizianagaram on Sreenivasa Reddy a potent weapon to hit at the CM. The Congress high command appears to have understood that unless Botcha is handled with kid gloves, any truce between the two leaders will be a will O’ the wisp.In the two sessions that Kiran Kumar Reddy and Botcha, along with deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha, had with Ghulam Nabi Azad, the PCC chief appeared relieved. In fact the troika took part in the Jagjivan Ram birth anniversary celebrations at AP Bhavan in Delhi in the morning. They went to the venue together to send out a message that there are no differences among them.Later Botcha said he had no objection to the ACB continuing the investigation and that he only objected to the words Sreenivasa Reddy used against ACB inspector Ganesh. He then went on to say that he did not know who Sreenivasa Reddy was and feigned surprise that he had been transferred.The high command, having cobbled up a working relationship between the two leaders, expect them to face the bypolls as a team. But Botcha  is already busy with his contingency strategy. He dropped hints that if the party suffers reverses in the byelections, he alone should not be held responsible since there were other “elders” too involved in the task of scripting a strategy to win the elections, implying that the chief minister too should take the rap if the party comes a cropper.