Telangana Congress party, which has already been beaten and bruised in the just concluded assembly elections in the state, received a major shock, when four of its MLCs represented to legislative council chairman K Swamy Goud, asking for merger of their legislature party in the council with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
The MLCs – Akula Lalitha, Santosh Kumar, M S Prabhakar and K Damodar Reddy told Swamy Goud that they had held a meeting of Congress legislature party of the council and resolved to merge it with the TRS legislature party.
Accordingly, they wanted the council chairman to acknowledge them as TRS MLCs.
Obviously, the move was aimed at avoiding them being disqualified under anti-defection law.
Since Swamy Goud has served notices on four TRS MLAs who joined the Congress before elections asking them why they cannot be disqualified, he would have to do the same in case of Congress MLAs who defected to the TRS. So, to avoid this, they came up with this merger proposal.
Out of 40 MLCs in the legislative council, the Congress had a strength of seven MLCs.
Out of these seven, Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy resigned from his membership following his election to the state assembly from Munugode constituency in the recent elections.
Of the remaining six, two MLCs Damodar Reddy and Prabhakar had already defected to the TRS before the assembly elections.
Two other MLCs – Lalitha and Santosh met TRS president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday night and expressed their willingness to join the TRS.
So, only two MLCs would be left for the Congress: Mohammad Shabbir Ali and Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy but their term will come to an end by March. If they, too, go, the Congress will have no representation in the council!