Opposition party MLAs joining the ruling party was not new to Indian politics and recently even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has inducted some MLAs of Trinamool Congress (TMC), said Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) working president K.T. Rama Rao.
Rejecting the criticism that the ruling TRS had openly encouraged defections, he reminded that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself had claimed during the election campaign that 40 TMC MLAs were in touch with him. Later some of them joined the BJP, and that too without fulfilling the mandatory norm of the two-thirds majority. “Why are you singling out the TRS and our government?” .
“Congress MLAs joined the TRS Legislature Party (TRSLP) as per the constitutional norms. If they want to join our party after legally splitting from their parent party how can we stop them,” he asked. The Speaker had taken a decision and the party had nothing to say about it, he said while speaking to reporters at the Telangana Bhavan on Saturday.
He ridiculed the Congress claim that democracy had been murdered with the merger of 12 Congress MLAs into TRSLP and asked if it was not a murder when Congress inducted TRS MLCs and a Lok Sabha member just before the elections.
Mr. Rama Rao showed newspaper clippings of senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh openly inviting TRS MLAs into their party. Moreover, it was the Congress that had encouraged defections and laid the path for such practices, he said, reminding how TRS MLAs were encouraged to join the Congress by the Rajasekhar Reddy government in 2004.
‘Social justice’
The working president said TRS ensured social justice, electing 17 zilla parishad chairpersons from backward and downtrodden communities out of the 32. Of 64 posts, including vice-chairpersons, 40 went to these communities, reflecting the TRS commitment to social justice.
He said the Congress and the BJP were washed out in the local body elections and without realising this they were making tall claims of their victory in the Lok Sabha elections.