Defections worry Congress in Telangana ahead of Lok Sabha election 2019

With the decision of two Congress MLAs joining the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), defections loom over the Congress party in Telangana ahead of the Lok Sabha elections due this summer after its humiliating defeat in the assembly polls last year.

Two tribal lawmakers, Athram Sakku representing Asifabad in Komaram Bheem of Asifabad district and Regula Kantha Rao from Pinapaka in Bhadhradri Kothagudem district, resigned from the grand old party and crossed over to chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s TRS.

Besides them, Telugu Desam Party’s (TDP’s) Sandra Venkata Veeraiah, a four-time MLA, too made a similar statement expressing his wish to join the TRS.

A source in the TRS said more opposition lawmakers were in touch with chief minister KCR, as he is popularly called, and they are likely to join the ruling party anytime.

The resignation of three MLAs after the schedule for the legislative council election was issued gave a big jolt to the Congress. The election will be held on March 12.

The plans of the Congress, which wants to bag at least one out of the four seats in the council with its existing strength of 19 MLAs and two from its ally TDP, have gone awry with the desertions. The strength of the Congress in the 119-member council fell to 18 with the defections.

The TRS allotted one seat to its ally All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and staked its claim for the remaining three seats, making its victory in all the four seats a foregone conclusion.

With the latest resignations from the Congress and the TDP, the TRS tally in the state assembly has gone up to 93. KCR’s party got 88 seats in the recent assembly election and two Independents later joined the TRS.

“Why is KCR on a poaching spree even after he swept the state polls and enjoys a comfortable majority in the assembly? After all, Rao has grand plans to win 16 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats and that he is out to demoralise the Congress by entertaining massive defections,” political analyst T Lakshminarayana explained.

Although the Congress failed miserably in securing seats in the 2018 assembly election, it emerged as a force to reckon with in terms of vote share at 32.32% even as the TRS polled 47.4%. The Congress remained strong in certain pockets like Khammam district where the TRS won only one seat.

The realisation of KRC’s grand plans are unlikely in 2019 if the Congress is allowed a strong edifice, hence the chief minister’s plans to decimate it, Lakshminarayana said.

Eight out of 21 MLAs from the Congress and 12 out of 15 from the TDP defected to the TRS during the KCR’s first stint as chief minister from 2014 to 2018.

The latest defections have angered the Congress as the state unit of the party has planned protest rallies in the constituencies represented by the turncoats from the second week of March, said its president N Uttamkumar Reddy.

Uttamkumar Reddy added that a delegation from the state Congress met the Telangana assembly Speaker Srinivasa Reddy with a request to disqualify the two defected MLAs.

He wants the assembly speaker to follow the same precedence in the latest defections after council chairman K Swamy Goud disqualified three members, K Yadav Reddy, R Bhupathi Reddy, and S Ramulu Naik, for crossing over to the Congress from the TRS in January this year.

First Published: Mar 07, 2019 09:13 IST