Congress response on unabated defection has been tepid and half-hearted.
Hyderabad: The Congress Legislature Party (CLP) in Telangana is in great danger of being merged with the ruling TRS in the Assembly, if efforts made by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) and party’s working president K.T. Rama Rao succeed in the next few days. The Congress won 19 out of 119 MLAs in the 7 December Assembly elections and is now the principal Opposition party in the House.
So far, the Congress lost as many as 11 of its MLAs who declared their intent of joining TRS along with one TDP MLA—Sandra Venkata Veeraiah from Sattupally (SC). Indications are there that two more Congress MLAs would join TRS, taking the tally to 13 which is two-thirds of the Opposition party sufficient to effect a merger with another party, as per the anti-defection law.
If that happens, Congress will be left with just six MLAs and lose its recognised Opposition party status, thus denying its leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka the Leader of Opposition (LoP) status with a Cabinet rank. Interestingly, All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), which won seven MLAs, will become the biggest Opposition group in the Assembly, pushing Congress to the next position.
In the elections, TRS won 88 seats, but the ruling party quickly went on a drive to woo the Opposition MLAs—Congress and TDP which won just two seats to its side. The ruling wasting no time added two Independents—Koruganti Chander from Ramagundam and L. Ramulu from Wyra (ST), taking its tally to 100. Then on, TRS has added one TDP MLA and several Congress MLAs in the last five months. So far, 11 Congress MLAs have switched their sides to TRS. Now, TRS leadership plans to attract two more Congress MLAs to its side, so that it can reach the requisite 13 number for official merger of CLP into the ruling party. TRS sources confirmed that Sangareddy MLA T. Jayaprakash Reddy and Podem Veeraiah (Bhadrachalam-ST) are in touch with it and would soon join them. Once these three MLAs announce their decision, the merger process would begin, said a TRS MLC who is coordinating the defections and merger activity. Then, the Congress will be left with six MLAs—N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, PCC president, Bhatti Vikramarka, Pilot Rohit Reddy, Seethakka, K. Rajagopal Reddy and D. Sridhar Babu.
Sensing the trouble, the Congress on Thursday led a delegation to Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan in the city and submitted a memorandum seeking action against the defected 10 MLAs from their side. “Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy is not meeting us or taking action on our petitions pending with him, so please intervene and save the democracy,” said the Congress memorandum. The Congress response to the unabated defections from its side seems to be tepid and half-hearted. The party has earlier announced that it would hold protest meetings and demonstrations in the constituencies of the defected MLAs, but it couldn’t take up the campaign thanks to the Lok Sabha elections that came in between. Even after that, the Congress is not in a position to put a spirited fight against defections.
AICC general secretary R.C. Khuntia has only expressed hope that the defections would stop once his party wins some MP seats on 23 May, results day. Talking to this newspaper on Friday, Vikramarka said that the TRS had displayed its anti-Dalit nature by trying to deny him the LoP status in the Assembly. “Earlier, they had done the same by merging our party with TRS in the Legislative Council and thus removing the LoP status to Mohammad Ali Shabbir, a minority, so the TRS is anti-Dalit and anti-minorities,” said Vikramarka.