With Revanth Reddy landing Dr Kumar in Congress, the number of BRS MLAs the grand old party poached so far reached five.
Dr Sanjay Kumar with Revanth Reddy and Pongulei Srinivas Reddy. (X)
Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy who does not let his left hand know what his right hand is doing, spirited away BRS Jagital MLA Dr M Sanjay Kumar to the Congress on Sunday, 23 June.
It came as a total surprise as no BRS leaders even in their wildest dreams had thought Dr Kumar would switch sides.
For the BRS, the writing on the wall is clear, the Congress is gunning for two-thirds of its MLAs to shore up the strength in the Assembly.
With Revanth Reddy landing Dr Kumar in Congress, the number of BRS MLAs the grand old party poached so far reached five.
The other four BRS MLAs who joined the Congress camp were: Kadiyam Srihari (Station Ghanpur), Danam Nagender (Khairatabad), Tellam Venkat Rao (Bhadrachalam) and very recently former Speaker of Telangana Assembly and Banswada MLA Pocharam Srinivas Reddy.
Congress seems to have opted for the merger route to take the BRS MLAs into its fold, just as the way the BRS did after winning Assembly elections in 2014 and then again in 2018, to circumvent the Anti-Defection Law.
The Congress won 64 seats in the 2023 Assembly elections, three above the majority mark of 61. Its ally CPI won one seat, taking the coalition’s strength to 65.
Recently its number increased by one when it captured the Secunderabad Cantonment seat from the BRS in a by-election held along with Lok Sabha elections, taking the coalition’s number to 66.
The BRS won 39 seats in the Assembly elections but its strength shrank to 38 after it lost Secunderabad Cantonment seat to the Congress.
As the BRS has 38 MLAs, Congress needs at least 25 of its MLAs to effect a merger. As it has landed five, including Dr Kumar, it needs 20 more BRS MLAs.
According to sources, the grand old party is going all out in trying to land the BRS MLAs in its folds since it does not trust the BJP.
The BJP wants to beat Congress to the punch in landing the BRS MLAs, whom, it also is targeting.
The only disadvantage that BJP has is that it is not a ruling party in the state and the only disadvantage the Congress has is that it is not a ruling party at the national level. The odds are evenly placed.
When it came to Srinivas Reddy, there were at least some rumours that he might switch to Congress because he wanted to secure his son Bhaskar’s political future.
He is understood to have been more or less convinced that he would not get anywhere in the BRS which is, at present, just a regional party, out of power and having zero seats in the Lok Sabha.
However, when it came to Dr Kumar, Revanth Reddy inducted him into the Congress like a military operation, without the BRS getting any scent. Dr Kumar was the least expected BRS MLA to defect to Congress.
It was widely rumoured that former minister and Karimnagar MLA Gangula Kamalakar might change horses midstream and join the Congress.
Surprisingly, Dr Kumar became the one spirited away by the grand old party.
On Sunday, BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) met with the party’s leaders from Karimnagar, including Kamalakar, and reportedly tried to make them not lose heart in the wake of the reversals the party faced in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections and the desertions that were continuing one after the other like a domino effect.
It is now apparent that Revanth Reddy wants to make KCR taste his own medicine, spiriting away the Opposition MLAs when he was the chief minister.
In 2018, the BRS won 88 seats, which was way above the majority mark and yet, chose to poach the legislators of the Congress which had only 19 seats.
Its number came down to 18 after N Uttam Kumar Reddy won the election to Lok Sabha from Nalgonda in 2019 and vacated his Huzurnagar Assembly seat which the BRS won in a by-election later.
BRS lured 12 Congress legislators one after the other, who constituted two-thirds of the Congress strength in the Assembly and inducted them into the BRS.
Consequently, the Congress’s strength in the Assembly fell to five.
The Congress cried foul, saying that poaching its MLAs was illegal. However, since those poached constituted two-thirds of its strength in the Assembly, the party could not do anything but watch the unfolding scene helplessly.
There were no takers for their argument that it was unethical to take an MLA who won on hand symbol into the BRS though it might be legal in the context of the Anti-Defection Law. They were crying in the wilderness.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil)
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