BRS MLAs Defecting To Congress — Revanth Reddy Giving KCR A Taste Of His Own Medicine?

Gudem Mahipal Reddy, the MLA from Patancheru near Hyderabad, recently became the latest BRS legislator to switch to the Congress.

With him crossing over, the number of legislators choosing to leave the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) after the 2023 assembly elections has increased to ten.

The MLAs who switched before him include Kadiyam Srihari, the former deputy chief minister in K Chandrasekhar Rao's (KCR) government, as well as Danam Nagender, Tellam Venkat Rao, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, Sanjay Kumar, Kale Yadaiah, Bandla Krishnamohan Reddy, and Arekapudi Gandhi.

Gandhi had switched just a few days before Mahipal Reddy.

Despite KCR's recent meeting with his MLAs, where he confidently stated that the BRS would soon bounce back, there has been a continuous exodus that shows no signs of stopping. 

It remains uncertain whether these MLAs will resign voluntarily or face disqualification by the assembly speaker, who typically takes time to make rulings on such matters. Nonetheless, the Congress appears ambitious.

Even before the Lok Sabha elections, senior Congress leader Uttam Kumar Reddy had said that over 25 MLAs of the BRS were in touch with his party.

If the Congress can get 26 MLAs to switch over (out of the 39 MLAs of the BRS), it would be able to say that two-thirds of the BRS legislative party has decided to merge with the Congress and thus all these MLAs would escape the anti-defection law.

While the switching of MLAs to the ruling party has happened before and is not unusual, a question that could be asked, especially by those not from Telangana, is why the Congress, which has a majority of its own, is resorting to such tactics.

Well, the answer lies in the fact that Congress did not get a huge majority. It won 64 out of 119 seats, just four more than the majority mark of 60 seats.

Further, according to political commentators, there is a pattern in the defections, with four of the MLAs who switched, i.e., Danam Nagender, Kale Yadaiah, Arekapudi Gandhi and Mahipal Reddy belonging to the Greater Hyderabad region, where the party is weak.

The Congress had failed to win any seat in the region despite winning across the state. 

Defections remind people of the KCR era

All of these events are reminiscent of what happened during KCR's rule. The BRS had a majority but still caused more than two-thirds of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Congress MLAs to switch over. The idea was to weaken these parties to get a complete hold over Telangana.

While the TDP became almost non-existent in Telangana, with its most well-known figure, Revanth Reddy, joining the Congress, the latter ceded much of the opposition space in the state to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) until its resurgence following the victory in Karnataka.

Thus, with Congress in the mood to push for more defections, KCR and the BRS are likely to continue getting a taste of their own medicine for some time.