Behind The Scene: KK pays for his loose tongue

Finally, Pradesh Congress Committee president K Keshava Rao had to pay a heavy price for his loose tongue. In a bid to defend his rowdy son Venkat, who allegedly shot dead his friend Prashant Reddy, Kesava Rao tried to influence the investigation by saying it appeared to be a suicide, rather than a murder.

According to Gandhi Bhavan sources, Keshava Rao got a clear message from the Congress high command in Delhi to step down from the PCC presidentship. Within a couple of hours of he visiting Apollo Hospitals to call on his son and giving him a clean chit in the firing incident, Kesava Rao reportedly received a telephone call from K V P Ramachandra Rao, advisor to Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhar Rao, asking him to put in his papers.

Party sources say that the Congress high command took a serious view of the incident on Sunday itself when the news of the shooting incident at Keshava Rao's son's residence in Jubilee Hills was on TV news channels. The Chief Minister and KVP virtually closed all options for Keshava Rao to find an escape route. When a couple of ministers and a few MLAs and MLCs called on him to discuss the issue, Keshava Rao initially put up a bold face, saying that his 'friends and well-wishers' in Hyderabad and Delhi had all told him that there was no need for him to resign. But with the party high command cracking the whip, he had no choice but to announce his resignation before rushing to Delhi.