The AICC played its age-old trick to smartly control dissenting voices in the state. It forms a co-ordination panel to build a bridge between the government and the party in AP.

Interestingly, the committee is with some of those leaders who wield influence over larger sections of the party. This way, it’s like hitting two birds with one shot. The party high command now hopes it can gag those leaders going overboard in the name of regional lines. And also, contain dissidence especially from the Jagan camp since he was also made a member of the committee.

Committees are not uncommon in the grand-old Congress party but this committee has a fair bit of caution written all over it. The basic objective is to restore the co-ordination between the government and the party due to the Telangana and Samaikhyandra sloganeering. The party high command took enough care to have equal number of leaders from both Telangana and Andhra regions.

But whatever the high command hoped for, it all came to a big zero within 24 hours. Taking advantage of the power of the regionalism, some Telangana leaders rubbished the committee and wanted PCC president D Srinivas to be made the chairman. Srinivas is already there in the committee, but as the joint president.

Parliament Member Manda Jagannatham went a step ahead and said the committee is full of pro-samaikhandhra leaders. He said there was not a single MP from Telangana while three from the other two regions were taken aboard.

Despite their loyalties and respect to the party and Madam Sonia Gandhi, the Telangana leaders obviously can’t risk showing that at the cost of the more powerful ‘Telangana’ slogan. Thus, the high command game-plan to control the voices stutters at the starting blocs