In a daughter-versus-daughter drama, Sharmila and Kavitha have been exchanging political barbs at each other on public and social media platforms much to the amusement of observers.
Kavitha, the daughter of Telangana chief minister KCR made Sharmila, who is the founder of the Yuvajana Shramika Rythu Telangana Party (no link to her brother YS Jagan’s YSRCP), the target of her verbal barbs. Sharmila had accused TRS workers of attacking her convoy at Lingagiri village in Warangal on Monday and trying to stop her from meeting people in Telangana. Sharmila is the founder of the YSR Telangana Party and sister of Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Kavitha said that Sharmila and her party were just tools of the BJP to make sweeping and unfounded allegations/statements against the TRS as they were fearful of the hold the regional party has in the state.
Sharmila has been walking across the state, emulating her brother Jagan’s Odarpu Yatra in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, to gain support for their party YSR Congress Telangana, before the 2023 assembly elections.
When the BJP leaders including state president Bandi Sanjay, union minister G Kishan Reddy and other party leaders came out in support of Sharmila and condemned the attack on her, Kavitha took a dig, calling the YSR Congress an “arrow of the BJP” — one being used by the party to target the TRS.
Taunting Kavitha back, Sharmila retaliated in verse as well. “In the pink (TRS party colour) garden, known only for posts but not work, there is no dearth of poems,” she wrote.
She said that Kavitha, an MLC, was in the party only because she belonged to a politically influential family. Sharmila further accused Kavitha of neither undertaking a padayatra (walkathon) nor addressing people’s problems, but being just a showpiece in the TRS mantle.
To counter this, Kavitha brought out the rhymester in her and penned a poem, insinuating Sharmila was a plant of the BJP in Telangana. Taking to Twitter to post her poetic barb, Kavitha wrote, “Lotus flowers were singing the paeans of the arrow which was released by them.” Using Telugu terms for “Lotus covert” and “Orange Parrot”, Kavitha also reminded Sharmila that she is perceived as just another political tourist working on behalf of the BJP who did not know struggles like she did as the Rao family had emerged from the Telangana movement.
“The Telangana people are clever enough to distinguish between milk and water. Until yesterday, your vote was in Pulivendula (AP) and now you seem to have changed your route to Telangana BJP. Unlike you, I am neither a political tourist nor entered politics after coming to power, but one born in the Telangana agitation,” Kavitha said in her poem.
On Monday, Sharmila faced an attack along with the caravan she used to rest as part of her ongoing ‘Praja Prasthanam Padayatra’. The caravan bus was set on fire allegedly by TRS workers. A few cars that were part of the entourage were also damaged.
To prove her point of how the TRS used brute force to stop her, Sharmila made a visually dramatic entry in Hyderabad. Bandaged, Sharmila used one of these damaged cars to try and drive into Pragati Bhavan, the official residence of the Telangana CM. When she was stopped by the police, she refused to get down. The police then called a towing vehicle and towed the car away with Sharmila still sitting inside it. Sharmila was arrested amidst this high drama and later released on bail.
Finding no political space in Andhra Pradesh’s state politics with her brother as the CM, Sharmila launched her party in neighbouring Telangana in July 2021 to establish her political career. Sharmila has found support amongst those who were loyalists of her father YS Rajasekhara Reddy, a popular CM of United Andhra Pradesh (before Telangana split to become a new state). Her party is expected to fight the 2023 assembly polls on its own and contest all 119 seats in the state.
Kavitha has served as TRS’s Lok Sabha MP from Nizamabad from 2014 to 2019 and is presently a Member of the Legislative Council, Nizamabad.
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