Andhra Pradesh Pradesh Congress (APPC) President Gidugu Rudra Raju has submitted his resignation to party President Mallikarjun Kharge paving the way for the appointment of YS Sharmila as the state unit president ahead of Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the state.

YS Sharmila, the sister of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, joined the Congress on 4 January. While being inducted into the party in the presence of Kharge and Rahul Gandhi she was tipped to be the next APPC chief with a view to revive the Congress in the state.

Speaking on the occasion, Sharmila had said that it was her father YS Rajasekhar Reddy’s dream to see Rahul Gandhi as prime minister.

Raju was appointed PCC president on 23 November, 2022 soon after Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra passed through Andhra Pradesh. A Brahmin leader from a state where elections are fought on deeply-etched caste lines he was a YS Rajasekhar Reddy loyalist. He was one of the handful leaders who refused to leave the Congress even when most of its key leaders made a beeline for other political parties after the bifurcation of the state.

The Congress does not have a single MLA or MP in residual Andhra Pradesh for the past decade but the electoral victories in Karnataka and Telangana have raised hopes of a revival of the party in the state. However, a couple of leaders, who quit the YSRCP or TDP before elections, have not shown any interest in joining the Congress so far.

With Sharmila’s return to the Congress – her father’s party – she will be pitted against her brother YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. Though she actively campaigned for the YSRCP when YS Jagan was in jail in a quid pro quo and even in 2014 and 2019 polls, the siblings fell out with each other over finances and denial of political space in AP to her.

Sharmila then formed the YSRTP with her mother Vijayamma’s firm support to her to fight elections in Telangana but withdrew from the contest to avoid splitting the anti-KCR vote. Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy had opposed the entry of Sharmila in the party’s state unit forcing her to return to Andhra Pradesh politics.

YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who always blamed the Congress and Sonia Gandhi for his troubles during his incarceration in a disproportionate assets case, has now accused the party of trying to break his family apart. On the day he came to Telangana to pay a courtesy call to K Chandrasekhar Rao, he visited his mother Vijayamma at Lotus Pond in Hyderabad when Sharmila joined the Congress.