In what could be another big shock to former Telangana Chief Minister and Bharatiya Rastra Samithi president K. Chandrasekhar Rao, six of his party MLCs met the current CM Revanth Reddy at 11:30 pm on Thursday and decided to join the Indian National Congress with immediate effect.
This unexpected development that transpired late in the midnight at the CM’s residence is currently the talk of the town in political circles because none of these MLCs gave any hint of leaving BRS and joining congress.
The MLCs who met Revanth Reddy in the presence of Congress general secretary in charge of Telangana, Deepa Das Munshi include Bhanu Prasad, Basavaraj Sarayya, Dande Vittal, MS Prabhakar, Mallesham and Boggarapu Dayanand. Out of these six MLCs, two belong to governor’s quota and one belong to MLA quota. The remaining MLCs come under local body quota.
With the sudden shift of allegiance, BRS will now have the support of only 21 MLCs in the council and the congress increases its tally to 12. All these MLCs convened a meeting in a hotel before reaching CM’s residence late in the night. Revanth Reddy returned from Delhi after meeting the prime minister and immediately welcomed these MLCs into the party.
This is huge setback for KCR because BRS has already been facing an existential crisis ever since the humiliating drubbing in the 2023 assembly elections as many of its leaders started defecting into Congress and BJP. Already, six BRS MLAs namely Danam Nagender, Kadiyam Srihari, Tellam Venkat Rao, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy and Sanjay Kumar Yadav Kale jumped ship into the Congress.
The disastrous performance in the Loksabha elections with BRS failing to secure a single seat out of the 16 further dampened the spirits of the cadre which is expecting a strong comeback from KCR.
Now, the sudden en masse defections of MLCs is another jolt to the party because it is likely to be pushed into political oblivion unless anything miraculous happens by the next time. It remains to be seen how the BRS high command responds on these defections.