Shabbir Ali ridicules BRS criticism on MLAs defection to Congress
Hyderabad: Following the criticism of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leaders over defection of their leaders into congress party, Congress senior leader and Advisor to the Telangana Government (SC, ST, BC & Minorities) Mohammed Ali Shabbir launched a scathing attack on BRS for its stance on political defections. He accused BRS president and former Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao of initiating the culture of defection in the state.
In the series of defections, on Sunday Jagitayla BRS MLA Sanjay kumar joined congress in the presence of Chief minister Revanth Reddy. Recently giving blow to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi party, senior leader Banswada MLA Pocharam Srinivas Reddy joined the Indian National Congress (INC) on Friday. Earlier Station Ghanpur MLA Kadiyam Srihari and Khairatabad MLA Danam Nagender who contested from BRS shifted their loyalties to congress.
Commenting over the same BRS working president KTR took to X(formerly twitter) said, “The power of people is always stronger than the people in power. We have faced several defections of MLAs in the past in 2004-06 when Congress was in Government .Telangana responded strongly by stepping up the people’s agitation & eventually Congress had to bow its head. History shall repeat itself”.
He condemned the BRS for criticizing the Congress party, citing anti-defection laws and morals and labeling it as hypocrisy. He recalled that when Congress and TDP MLAs joined BRS, KCR justified it by claiming they were joining the ruling party to develop their constituencies and Telangana. However, now that BRS members are joining Congress, the same logic is not being applied.
Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan, Shabbir Ali said, “It is KCR who started the culture of defection from the day he came to power in 2014 and continued it till he lost the 2023 Assembly elections. Citing examples, he said on June 2, 2014, on the day Telangana was officially formed, two BSP MLAs, Indrakaran Reddy and Koneru Konappa, defected to the BRS. On December 16, 2014, Talasani Srinivas Yadav, a TDP MLA, was appointed minister. As per the rules, Srinvas Yadav should have resigned within six months and faced bye-elections, but he continued in his position without doing so. KCR subsequently facilitated the defection of 11 TDP MLAs one after another, culminating in the official merger of TDP with BRS on March 11, 2016. Srinivas Yadav remained a TDP MLA and a TRS Minister for 14 months and 24 days, which Shabbir Ali highlighted as a significant breach of democratic principles.
Shabbir Ali accused KCR of systematically undermining democracy in Telangana by decimating the opposition. During KCR’s first term (2014-2018), BRS witnessed the defection of 4 MPs, 25 MLAs, and 18 MLCs, totaling 47 defections. In the second term (2018-2023), another 14 MLAs, including 12 from Congress and two from TDP, defected to BRS. Shabbir Ali asserted that over the past decade, KCR orchestrated the defection of 59 elected representatives, fundamentally altering the political landscape in Telangana.
He claimed that more than 30 out of 39 BRS MLAs are ready to switch to Congress, predicting a significant weakening of BRS, which might lose its status as the main opposition party in the coming days. He suggested that, except for KCR’s family members, no one would remain in the BRS.