Hyderabad, June 24 (NSS): Congress senior leader and Advisor to the Telangana Government (SC, ST, BC & Minorities) Mohammed Ali Shabbir has launched a scathing attack on the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (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 Telangana.
Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan here on Monday, Shabbir Ali said that KCR had 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.
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.
Shabbir Ali accused KCR of systematically undermining democracy in Telangana by decimating the opposition. He pointed to the period between March 2 and June 6, 2020, when KCR engineered the defection of 12 Congress MLAs, effectively stripping Dalit leader Bhatti Vikramarka of the Leader of Opposition status. Similarly, he accused KCR of inducing Congress MLCs to defect to BRS to prevent him, a Muslim leader, from assuming the position of Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council, despite having only one month remaining in his term.
Shabbir Ali has condemned the BRS for criticising the Congress party, citing anti-defection laws and morals and labelling 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. 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.
Shabbir Ali raised serious concerns about the allocation of prime land for BRS party offices. He stated that the previous KCR government allocated 11 acres of prime land worth Rs 1100 crore in Kokapet for just Rs 37 crore for the BRS office.
The Congress leader also pointed out that similar prime lands were allotted for BRS party offices in district headquarters. He demanded that the present Congress government cancel such allocations and reclaim the lands. He said the Kokapet land given to the BRS party should be auctioned, and its proceeds should be utilised for crop loan waiver and Rythu Bharosa schemes.
Shabbir Ali further accused the BJP of attempting to privatise SCCL, with the auction of coal mines being the first step, while the BRS remained a mute spectator for ten years as the BJP government systematically damaged SCCL.(NSS)
