BRS leaders speaking to newspersons in Delhi on Tuesday.
| Photo Credit: By Arrangement
The Bharat Rashtra Samithi Parliamentary Party (BRSPP) has alleged that the Congress party is following double standards in the anti-defection issue as it has been vigorously encouraging the defections after making an election promise that it would amend the Constitution to make automatic the disqualification of MPs and MLAs who defect from the party they are elected, to another.
Address a press conference along with BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao and party leader T. Harish Rao in New Delhi on Tuesday, BRSPP leader K.R. Suresh Reddy said it was unfortunate that on the same dais from which the Congress party had released its Lok Sabha election manifesto, it had an MLA who defected from BRS (Danam Nagender) and made him its candidate for Secunderabad LS constituency, though he could not win the election later. He stated that the BRS was planning to expose the double standards of the Congress party strongly in Parliament, with the help of whatever strength they had, against the latter encouraging defections in Telangana while at the same time opposing it in some other States.
Working president of the party Mr. Rama Rao said the Congress party had been talking and making tall claims as the vanguard of the Constitution but the fact remained that it had introduced defections in the country in 1967 when an independent MLA Daya Lal had defected to the Congress only a few days after his election, sowing seeds of the ‘Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram’ culture in politics. It was the Congress government led by late Rajiv Gandhi that had introduced the anti-defection law in the country in 1985 but it was the same party that had encouraged defections in several States after that, including in combined Andhra Pradesh in 2006, when several BRS (TRS) MLAs were admitted to the Congress, he pointed out.
Further, he said Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president Balasaheb Thorat was accusing the Shiv Sena (Shinde)-BJP government there of employing all tactics at its disposal to weaken the Congress and its allies by encouraging defections, unmindful of the fact that the party was fighting for disqualification of an MLA Kiran Choudhury in Haryana against her joining BJP.
Similarly, the Congress party was also fighting for the disqualification of six of its MLAs who had voted for BJP in the Rajya Sabha election and it was based on the Congress’ petition pertaining to the defection of its MLA in Manipur to BJP that the Supreme Court had given a landmark judgement that the Speaker must decide on the disqualification petitions within three months after receiving them.
Instead of implementing over 420 promises made before the Assembly elections in Telangana, the Congress party had already admitted seven each of BRS MLAs and MLCs since December last, he pointed out.
