Congress is slowly, but steadily becoming a mere shadow of its former self in both Telangana and residuary Andhra Pradesh. After slowly losing its key leaders to other parties, and being snubbed by TRS, its last attempt to garner support, the Bus Yatra, is also failing to elicit the desired response in Seemandhra.

On Tuesday, Congress came to realise that their Bus Yatra, that started from March 21, might not be such a good idea after all. The yatra got poor response when it covered Nellore and Tirupati.

The party was under the impression that it would get a good response courtesy the presence of campaign committee chairman K Chiranjeevi who was once Tirupati MLA.

Chiranjeevi had launched his Praja Rajyam Party amid much fanfare in 2008 here and was even elected to Assembly from here.

After PRP merged with Congress, the public revolted and said that the star cheated them. Tirupati and Nellore people on Tuesday showed what they thought of Congress's decision to divide the state.

Contrary to the expectations of Chiranjeevi, very few party cadres attended the programme and there was low turn out of general public as well.

With no takers for the yatra, the meeting was filled with police personnel in uniform.

However the superstar refused to feel threatened with the low turnout, and instead went on with his speech, encouraging party cadres to work hard for the upcoming elections.

He also lambasted TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu saying how can the latter claim to develop Seemandhra like Singapore when he failed to even open his mouth against bifurcation in the Assembly. He also asked how could people believe Chandrababu, when he couldn't even articulate Seemandhra's needs during the debate.

-Siva@Sakshipost