Telangana: KTR slams Rahul Gandhi on ‘MLA chori’

BRS working president KT Rama Rao Friday called out the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, for complicity in the ‘MLA chori’ after turncoat MLAs denied they had switched to the Congress. Rao took a dig at Gandhi’s allegations of ‘vote chori’, wondering how it was any less than the stealing of MLAs in Telangana. The Speaker of the Telangana Assembly had sent notices to the dissident BRS MLAs over the disqualification notices against them following a directive of the Supreme Court.

However, the MLAs have denied that they had switched parties.

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Rao posted photographs of the dissident MLAs wearing Congress scarves and posing with Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on his ‘X’ handle and directed his ire against Gandhi. He wondered whether the Congress MP could recognise the party scarf and the dissident MLAs who met him in Delhi. He said, “Now all these MLAs who joined Congress after winning on the BRS ticket are saying they didn’t switch parties, and this isn’t Congress scarf. Do you agree? Isn’t this MLA chori? How is this any less than vote chori? Aren’t you ashamed of your complicity?”

The BRS MLAs who defected to the Congress have denied that they switched parties and instead maintained that they met the chief minister and other leaders of Congress seeking development funds for their constituencies.

The ten dissident BRS MLAs had met Chief Minister Revanth Reddy on 7 September at his residence and discussed their future after the Supreme Court directed Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar to dispose of the disqualification notices submitted against them by the BRS and BJP. They discussed legal and political implications. One of the key dissidents, Danam Nagender, the MLA of Khairatabad who had even fought MP elections from Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency on a Congress ticket, is on a sticky wicket, though. He has offered to resign and fight the upcoming Jubilee Hills byelection as a Congress nominee.