HYDERABAD: Responding very strongly to the exclusive story in Deccan Chronicle, (‘Where is Santosh?’, Sept. 27), senior TRS leader and Rajya Sabha MP Joginapally Santosh Kumar said on Wednesday, “I am where I always am – at the service of my leader and life’s sole force and inspiration, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.”
A perceptibly emotionally upset Santosh, speaking exclusively to DC, said, “Am I not a human being? Don’t I have a heart? Won’t I have a bad moment or a health problem? But nothing on earth will make me change my conviction that I am nothing and only a servant to the larger cause of KCR garu.”
Stating that there was no politics involved in his minor digression from party duty, Santosh emphasised strongly, “I don’t even call myself a leader. I am just working to serve KCR garu, without whom I am nothing. My only job in life is to follow all his orders, humbly. Any suggestion that I will be anywhere except at his service is ridiculous.”
He did not respond to the issue of Enforcement Directorate investigations or the politics behind it, saying, “What will happen will happen.”
He also felt that politics should not reach a low where political aspirations of rivals should drag people down personally.
Assuring everyone in the TRS — who were concerned after the news spread that a spat between Chandrashekar Rao and Santosh led to the latter sulking, walking away and switching off his phone in anger — that he was very much in Hyderabad and at the service of the party boss, he said, “I am calling you from Pragati Bhavan. I am where I am meant to be.”
State units of the national Opposition parties to the TRS, including the Congress and the BJP, had made scathing remarks against the MP, considered the closest to CM Rao, saying, “The pink fort has started to crumble.”
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