Hyderabad: Another Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) legislator crossed over to the ruling Congress party on Friday, June 28, in Telangana. A total of six BRS MLAs have thus far joined the ruling party, bringing down the number of BRS in the state assembly to 32.
Kale Yadaiah, representing the Chevella assembly constituency, is the latest BRS MLA to join the Congress party. Yadaiah joined the ruling party in the presence of Telangana chief minister A. Revanth Reddy and All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of Telangana Deepa Das Munshi, in New Delhi on Friday.
In the December 2023 assembly polls, BRS had won 39 seats against Congress’s 64 seats. The ruling party wrested the Secunderabad Cantonment assembly from the BRS in a bypoll held along with the Lok Sabha after the opposition party’s MLA died in a car accident. While three BRS MLAs had joined the Congress party in the period between assembly elections and parliament elections, three MLAs shifted their allegiance over the last week. Consequently, the BRS tally in the state assembly is 32.
Besides Yadaiah, BRS MLAs Pocharam Srinivas Reddy (Banswada assembly segment) and Sanjay Kumar (Jagitial assembly segment) jumped ship this past week. Srinivas Reddy is a six-MLA and had served as the Assembly Speaker when BRS was in power.
Pocharam Srinivas Reddy with chief minister Revanth Reddy. Photo: By arrangement.
Pocharam Srinivas Reddy with chief minister Revanth Reddy. Photo: By arrangement.
Earlier, BRS MLAs Danam Nagender ( Khairatabad), Kadiam Srihari (Station Ghanpur) and Tellam Venkat Rao (Bhadrachalam) had joined the Congress in the period between Assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
Besides MLAs, K. Keshava Rao, BRS parliamentary party leader and Rajya Sabha MP, K. Keshava Rao, also joined the Congress. Rao was at one point served as the state Congress chief.
The exodus from BRS to Congress is on the expected lines after BRS drew a blank in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. Of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state, Congress and BJP won eight seats each. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has retained its seat of Hyderabad.
The possibility of BRS MLAs going to Congress rather than the BJP is higher going by the convention of leaders willing to join the ruling party apparently for hassle-free functioning. Leaders of the ruling party say that as many as 20 BRS MLAs are in touch with them and more of them are willing to desert the BRS.
“If we (the Congress party) open our gates, the BRS will be washed away in that flood,” chief minister Revanth Reddy has been saying. According to him, no one would be left in the BRS except former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) and his family members, K.T. Rama Rao and T. Harish Rao.
KCR, in a desperate bid to keep his flock together, held a series of meetings with party MLAs and other leaders at his farmhouse in the last few days to instil confidence in them that the desertions will not have any impact on BRS as its organisational network is intact.
A senior BRS leader and former MP B. Vinod Kumar told The Wire that the trend of MLAs switching sides is a result of elected MPs and MLAs giving up on their legislative powers and foraying into the executive domain. They are more concerned about meeting the demands of the people who go to them for pending work at police stations or revenue offices, which fall under the executive domain.
“The work will not be attended if the legislators remain in the Opposition party. They do not command the same respect as legislators of the ruling party in government offices,” he said. He added that the problem is more severe in urban constituencies as people throng to them seeking redressal of mounting day-to-day issues. Citing an example, he said a teenage youth recently drove past a BRS MLA whistling and making fun of him when the legislator was spotted on a road.
The setbacks for BRS started soon after the Assembly elections results on December 3 with MLA Nagender returning to the Congress fold. He won on a Congress ticket in 2014 and joined the BRS (then TRS) shortly after. Kadiam Srihari, a former deputy chief minister of the BRS government, was given the party ticket in the last Assembly elections overlooking the incumbent BRS MLA T. Rajaiah. He and his daughter K. Kavya, who won as MP from Warangal, joined the Congress together days before the notification for parliament elections was issued.
With the exit of Venkat Rao from the BRS, the party is unrepresented in the erstwhile Khammam district. The BRS has sought an appointment of Speaker G. Prasad Kumar to disqualify Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, Sanjay Kumar and others under anti-defection law. It is yet to get a confirmation.
The BRS had moved the high court seeking early disposal of the disqualification petition pending against Nagender, Srihari and Venkat Rao as the three months suggested by the Supreme Court for the Speaker to act had expired. However, Srinivas Reddy, when he was the Speaker, had not taken any action against the Congress MLAs who switched over to the BRS in the last term of the Assembly due to ambiguity in law over powers of the presiding officer of the House, sources said. They enjoyed immunity from court verdicts in the matter of disqualification.
Several petitions of BRS in the previous Congress governments in the combined Andhra Pradesh state were also kept pending by Speakers similarly.