Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Working President K.T. Rama Rao on Thursday welcomed the resignation of K. Keshava Rao from the Rajya Sabha after joining the Congress and demanded that the six BRS MLAs who switched loyalties to the ruling party should also quit.
“BRS MP Keshava Rao tendered resignation after joining the Congress party. Welcome his decision. What about the BRS MLA who defected and contested Lok Sabha polls on a Congress ticket,” Rama Rao asked in an apparent reference to D. Nagender, who unsuccessfully contested the polls from Secunderabad on a Congress ticket.
“What about half a dozen other BRS MLAs who defected to Congress? Rahul Gandhi, is this how you are going to uphold the Constitution,” the BRS leader asked in a post on X.
“If you can’t make BRS MLAs resign, how would the nation trust that you are committed to Schedule 10 Amendment as per the Congress manifesto? Yeh Kaisa Nyay Patra Hain,” asked KTR, as Rama Rao is popularly known.
Earlier, Keshava Rao met Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankar in Delhi and submitted his resignation.
The senior leader, who had announced his resignation from BRS in March, joined the Congress on Wednesday in the presence of party President Mallikarjun Kharge and Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy.
Keshava Rao returned to Congress after a decade following his association with the grand old party for almost five decades.
The veteran leader quit Congress in 2013 over the delay in granting statehood to Telangana, and joined the TRS (now BRS) to actively participate in the Telangana movement.
Keshava Rao was also appointed General Secretary of the BRS. Party chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao had sent him to the Rajya Sabha in 2014. He was renominated in 2020.
After BRS lost power to Congress in the Assembly elections held in November 2023, several BRS leaders have crossed over to the grand old party in Telangana.
Keshava Rao, along with his daughter Gadwal Vijayalaxmi, the Mayor of Greater Hyderabad, announced their resignation from BRS in March.