BRS adopts two-pronged strategy: To prevent defections & test the government's popularity with by polls

Hyderabad: The opposition BRS in Telangana is adopting a two-pronged strategy to keep its flock together, prevent the embarrassment of the merger of its legislature party into Congress, and also test waters on the popularity of the Congress government after almost eight months of rule.

BRS has been holding talks with constitutional and legal experts about disqualifying the ten party MLAs who hopped to Congress in the last few months.

In the last two months, the BRS team, led by its working president, KT Rama Rao, and former minister, T Harish Rao, visited Delhi and held discussions with the experts. Only a merger of the BRS legislature party into Congress can save the MLAs who have switched sides from disqualification.

For that to happen, Congress has to induct at least 16 more BRS MLAs. However, in order to prevent more MLAs from jumping the fence, BRS now wants to use a legal route to disqualify at least four MLAs who have joined Congress. This way, BRS can prevent defections, and if the by-elections take place, it wants to test the waters and mood of the Congress rule in the last eight months.

If 2/3rds of a party's total MLAs decide to merge with the legislature party, they do not attract provisions of the anti-defection law.

Given the strength of 38 MLAs in BRS, it needs 26 MLAs to write to the assembly speaker seeking the merger of BRSLP into Congress. With already ten MLAs in its kitty, Congress needs the support of another 16 MLAs to merge BRSLP.

Notably, BRS did the same after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Following the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BRS engineered the defections of the then-Congress MLAs.

In June 2019, 12 of the 18 MLAs in Congress requested that the Assembly Speaker merge the Congress Legislature Party with the then-ruling TRS Legislature Party. In the 2018 polls, the Congress had won 19 assembly seats, while the TRS had won 88 in the 119-member House. Following his victory in the Nalgonda Lok Sabha seat, then-TPCC chief Capt. N. Uttam Kumar Reddy resigned from the Huzurnagar constituency, reducing the number to 18.

BRS, after filing a petition with the Telangana assembly speaker to disqualify the BRS MLAs who had jumped the fence, has also approached the High Court. BRS is now seriously contemplating approaching the Supreme Court immediately if they get an unfavourable decision at the High Court. They are hopeful that they will get a favorable direction from the Supreme Court.

Constitutional experts, including Aryama Sundaram, are said to have informed the BRS team in Delhi that the Supreme Court has already given several judgements related to party hopping, including an MLA from Manipur.

They clarified that, unlike in the past, the Speaker will not delay the decision on disqualification for a long time. In this context, BRS leaders handed over documents pertaining to the High Court's petition for the disqualification of three MLAs and the Speaker's complaint against MLAs who switched parties to legal experts.

Legal experts stated that since the Supreme Court has already given clear guidelines on this matter, the High Court is unlikely to delay the decision for a long time. If the High Court does not announce its decision quickly, there is a possibility of approaching the Supreme Court, the legal experts said to have told the BRS team.

“BRS will take legal action against the MLAs who switched parties, and the court's decision will come out in a month or two. By-elections are inevitable in Telangana, and they will teach a lesson to the MLAs who switched parties in the public arena. We are confident the court's decision will be in our favour,” said KTR in Delhi after meeting Aryama Sundaram.