Hyderabad: The proposed visit of AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi to Telangana State is keeping BJP and TRS on tenterhooks. The two parties are a worried lot whom the re-oriented Rahul will take on. TRS and BJP are under the impression that the Congress, which got decimated in the state, would not be able to bounce back in the near future. The Congress party off-late has adopted an aggressive stance against the Centre and non-Congress governments in the states by raking up the farmers issues to rejuvenate the party.

The BJP believes that Rahul Gandhi would focus attention on how the TRS government was ignoring the farmers. The TRS till Friday maintained that people of Telangana would not believe a word of Rahul Gandhi, but the manner in which the young leader has been lashing out at the NDA government during his visits to Punjab, Maharashtra and Bihar is giving some anxious moments to party leadership.

The BJP and TRS leaders, informally, admit that the farmers’ issue has always been a sensitive one and it could cause damage to the ruling parties at the Centre and in the state. Though on record, BJP state president G Kishan Reddy and a few senior TRS leaders claim that the Congress was a spent force, are clueless on  how to counter the Congress party which proposes to launch a vitriolic attack against the NDA government at the Centre and the ruling TRS in Telangana.

The nervousness in the BJP is visible from the fact that senior party leaders, including Union Minister of State Bandaru Dattatreya had started attacking Rahul Gandhi. On Saturday, Dattatreya said Rahul should first apologise to the farmers for the injustice meted out to them during the previous UPA regimes before embarking on the padayatra. He alleged that it was the Congress Government which pushed hundreds of farmers to  suicide.

Dattatreya claimed that the Land Acquisition Bill of the BJP-led NDA government would empower the farmers and appealed all the political parties to support the same. The Congress, which took away agricultural land in the name of projects, is now trying to put the BJP government in bad light. He also alleged that the TRS government was not serious about the welfare of farmers. "While hundreds of farmers are committing suicide, the TRS leaders are busy in their celebrations," he said.