Jupalli Krishna Rao to resume Telangana Yatra

HYDERABAD:  Endowments minister Jupalli Krishna Rao, who suspended his Telangana Prabhiyan Yatra in Mahaboobnagar district after he was counselled by a delegation of PCC representatives on May 22, has decided to resume his yatra, come what may, from June 1, raising curtain over another bout of trouble in the district. ‘’I will resume my yatra. There is no going back on it. I will begin the yatra from the point where I had suspended temporarily,” Krishna Rao told Express. He temporarily suspended his yatra at Ieeza after the police stopped him and arrested him on May 21 to prevent him from entering Gadwal constituency On the same day, the police arrested information and public relations minister DK Aruna too at Gattu while she was on her way to Ieeza to obstruct Krishna Rao’s yatra.Krishna Rao, this time around, has drummed up support from Telangana MPs, to silence the voice of Aruna who mobilised her supporters to thwart Krishna Rao’s yatra from entering her Gadwal constituency.Ever since Krishna Rao began his yatra at Clock Tower in Mahaboobangar on April 28, Aruna was angry with him for not consulting her on his yatra. With Aruna adopting a belligerent posture, Rao-Reddy divide has  widened.After Krishna Rao was released on May 22, he came to Hyderabad and met chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and explained to him his side of story.As Krishna Rao is intent on his yatra, he invited Telangana MPs - Madhu Yashki Goud, Gutta Sukhender Reddy, Manda Jagannadham, G Vivek, K Keshava Rao and K Rajagopal Reddy and elicited their support for his padayatra. He is understood to have discussed with them the opposition from Aruna to his tour and wanted their moral support to resume his yatra.“All MPs supported my padayatra. I am doing it for Telangana. This is the single point agenda for me. There are no politics involved in this,” he said, asserting that it was not an anti-party activity because all through his yatra “I am using Congress flags and flags with Sonia Gandhi’s image.”What rattled Krishna Rao most was the way he was arrested and kept at a police station. “As a citizen of this country, I can visit any place. This is my fundamental right,” he said had made his point clear to the chief minister and the home minister when he met them.“I wanted no obstacles created for my yatra. I requested them to direct the police not to harass me the way they did at Ieeza,” Krishna Rao said.