This will help him win almost all the 17 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
Hyderabad: After wresting 88 out of 119 MLAs in the 7 December elections, Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) is on an aggressive poaching spree of Congress and TDP legislators, apparently to see that the parties were decimated in both the Houses of Legislature. This poaching will also help him win almost all the 17 Lok Sabha seats from the state in the next general elections.
Thanks to a meticulously executed operation by the ruling party, Congress, which has six members in the Legislative Council, has lost its recognised opposition party status and its leader Mohammad Ali Shabbir has lost his Leader of Opposition (LoP) post with Cabinet rank in the Council. Four of the six MLCs of Congress have joined TRS and announced that their party has been merged with the ruling party.
Telangana Legislative Council chairman K. Swamy Goud on Friday issued an official announcement recognising four Congress MLCs—M.S. Prabhakar, Damodar Reddy, Akula Lalitha and Santosh Kumar—as those of TRS with immediate effort. As a result, Congress is now left with two MLCs— Mohammad Ali Shabbir and Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy.
In the Council with strength of 40 members, the minimum number of seats for a party to have the opposition status is four. Now that the Congress has just two seats, its leader Ali Shabbir has lost his LoP status. Interestingly, both Shabbir and Sudhkar Reddy would retire from the Council after expiry of their six year term by 31 March 2019. So, the Congress might lose its presence the Council after that.
Prabhakar Rao and Damodar Reddy have joined TRS before the elections, while Lalitha and Santosh Kumar have joined last week. Interestingly, Lalitha, an important OBC leader from Nizamabad district, contested the Armoor Assembly seat on Congress ticket and lost. Within 10 days after the results, she along with Santosh Kumar has decided to defect the ruling party.
This has been objected to by the Congress which has termed the developments as “murder of democracy” and announced that they would move the High Court over the Council chairman’s order on the merger. Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president Uttam Kumar Reddy and Ali Shabbir said that a few legislators cannot merge a national party into a regional party.
However, TRS general secretary and MLC Palla Rajeswar Reddy defended the chairman’s decision on the ground that it was in tune with the provisions of the anti-defection law. “The chairman is justified to declare merge of a group, if it is backed by the two thirds members of a party and there is nothing wrong in it,” Reddy told this newspaper.
TRS is gearing up to ensure election of 16 vacancies that are likely to come up for the Council in the next few weeks. While six of them are necessitated due to expiry of term of members from the graduates, teachers, MLAs and local bodies’ constituencies, another 13 are needed to be filled due to either disqualification or resignation of the sitting members.
Congress MLC Komatireddy Rajagopala Reddy resigned his seat from the council after his election to the Assembly from Mugugode seat and another Congress MLC Konda Murali who defected to the party from TRS submitted his resignation due to a disqualification petition filed by the ruling party. A few more disqualification petitions filed by the TRS would be taken up by the chairman next week.
Even in the Assembly, the TRS is going to admit several MLAs from the Opposition Congress and TDP by the month end. Already, TDP’s two MLAs—Sandra Venkata Veeraiah and Mechha Nageswara Rao— are believed to have made up their mind on joining after 26 December. If they defect to the TRS, the TDP will have no representation in the Assembly.
Till now, two newly elected Independent MLAs—Ramulu Naik and Koganti Chander—have joined TRS, taking its strength to 90 and the joining of TDP MLAs will take it to 92. There are reports that some more Congress MLAs, too, are on the way to switch sides. Congress won 19 MLAs and it is unlikely to enjoy the status of recognised opposition if its number falls below 11.