Congress jumps in to diffuse as ‘Surekha-KTR’ battle turns ugly

Congress Minister Konda Surekha's controversial comments involving film stars lead to party intervention and public apology to Samantha.

Congress Minister Konda Surekha’s uncalled-for comments involving Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president K.T. Rama Rao and some film stars has led the Congress high command to intervene and subside the issue that seems to have brought the entire film industry on one platform.

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president B. Mahesh Kumar Goud spoke to the Minister conveying the party leaders’ concerns, views and sentiments on the entire episode and convinced her to issue an apology to the film star Samantha.

Apparently, that was the party high command’s view as well, with the Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy too expressing the view that dragging Samantha’s name into the whole episode was unnecessary and diverted the core issue of abusive and indecent trolls against Ms. Surekha allegedly by the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) supporters.

As the film actors also tagged Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi in their posts questioning Ms. Surekha’s outrageous comments, the party had to react quickly and strongly. Noticing the way the entire episode was shaping up, party high command is said to have sent a message to repair the damage.

Ms. Surekha lost control of herself and named some film stars linking them to BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao, whom she blamed was behind the trolls against her. The trolling was based on a photograph where the BJP MP from Medak M Raghunandan Rao welcomed her with a scarf as she was chaired the district officials meeting in Medak.

An emotional Ms. Surekha alleged that KTR encouraged the trolls and sought an apology from him. As the war of words continued, the Minister told the media that some film actors had to leave the industry due to KTR’s ‘black mailing’ tactics.

She blamed KTR for the divorce of actors Samantha and Naga Chaitanya alleging that the previous government and the BRS working president tapped the phones of film stars. This enraged not only the BRS workers but also the film stars who took to ‘X’ condemning the language and the content used by her. KTR sent her a strongly-worded legal notice seeking unconditional apology or face the law.