The suspension of four YSR Congress party MLAs from the party for allegedly voting in favour of Telugu Desam Party candidate Panchumarthi Anuradha in the MLC elections last week was totally justified, as no party would tolerate its members voting for the rival party.
Though the four suspended MLAs say they had voted only in favour of the official YSRC candidates and not for the TDP, the YSRC leadership has its mechanism to find out who the black sheep are. After identifying the MLAs, the party suspended them.
So far so good. But instead of finding out the actual reasons for their cross-voting in favour of the rival party, the YSRC leadership sought to defend its move on flimsy grounds – that the four MLAs had taken Rs 15-20 crore each from TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu to vote in favour of Anuradha.
YSR Congress party general secretary and advisor to the Jagan Mohan Reddy government, Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy told reporters that there was no other reason except the money factor in the decision of the four MLAs voting for the TDP candidate.
This sounds like a totally far-fetched allegation – as an opposition party would never try to bribe the ruling party MLAs. And there is no way Sajjala can prove his allegation.
In order to lend credence to his allegation, the YSRC leadership made Jana Sena Party MLA Rapaka Varaprasad make a claim that he had been offered Rs 10 crore by the TDP, and it was conveyed to him through a party legislator.
Naturally, there was a strong counter-reaction from the suspended MLAs, who are now asking how much money the YSRC had paid to get the support of four rebel TDP MLAs and one Jana Sena Party MLA.
In fact, the ruling party has more resources to lure the opposition MLAs, as was done by the TDP in the case of 23 YSRC MLAs, when the party was in the ruling in AP between 2014 and 2019.
At most, Naidu might have promised the party tickets to the rebel YSRC MLAs in the next elections. In any case, before making such allegations, Sajjala should have thought twice and come out with valid reasons. Otherwise, it would only backfire on him and the party.