Advisor to the Telangana Government (SC, ST, BC & Minorities), Mohammed Ali Shabbir, addressing a press conference in Hyderabad on June 24, 2024.
| Photo Credit: By Arrangement
Advisor to the Telangana Government (SC, ST, BC & Minorities), Mohammed Ali Shabbir, launched a scathing attack on the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) chief K Chandrashekhar Rao for orchestrating the defection of 61 elected representatives in his two terms initiating the culture of defections in the newly formed Telangana.
After trying to systematically undermine democracy in Telangana by decimating the opposition, it was irony that the BRS was making a hue and cry over defections from its ranks, he said at a press conference here on Monday.
Mr. Shabbir Ali said that KCR started the culture of defection from the day he came to power in 2014 and continued it till he lost the 2023 Assembly elections. 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 Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MLA, was appointed as a minister.
As per the rules, Mr. 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,” Mr. Shabbir Ali highlighted as a significant breach of democratic principles.”
He said that during KCR’s first term (2014-2018), four MPs, 25 MLAs, and 18 MLCs from other parties defected to BRS, totaling 47 defections. In the second term (2018-2023), another 14 MLAs, including 12 from Congress and two from TDP, defected to BRS.
He said KCR took away Dalit leader Bhatti Vikramarka of the Leader of Opposition status by engineering the defection of 12 Congress MLAs. Similarly, Mr. Shabbir Ali 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.
Terming the BRS as a symbol of hypocrisy, he recalled how KCR justified the defections for development of constituencies and Telangana. Mr. Shabbir Ali claimed that more than 30 out of 39 BRS MLAs are ready to switch to Congress, predicting a significant weakening of BRS and claimed that except for KCR’s family members, no one would remain in the BRS.
Mr. Shabbir Ali raised serious concerns over the allocation of prime land for BRS party offices, particularly how the party acquired 11 acres of prime land worth ₹1100 crore in Kokapet for just ₹37 crore. He demanded that the present Congress government cancel such allocations and reclaim the lands.
