Three more defections can curtail Mallu Bhatti’s role

Hyderabad: After five Congress MLAs’ decision to shift their loyalty, the fate of Mr Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka as the Opposition leader in Telangana state Assembly is in the hands of three MLAs. If three more MLAs shift their loyalty, the status of Mr Vikramarka will be reduced to Congress group leader from that of the leader of Opposition in the Assembly. This will cause him lose his rank of a Cabinet minister.

According to the rule to get recognition as the opposition leader, any party should have minimum a 12 MLAs (10 per cent of total MLAs). In the recent Telangana assembly elections, the Congress got 19 MLAs and Mr Vikramarka was elected as the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader. Mallu was recognised as the Opposition leader and got all facilities of a Cabinet minister.

But recently Congress MLAs Athram Sakku (Asifabad) and Rega Kantha Rao (Pinapaka) joined the TRS. Later Congress MLAs Banoth Haripriya (Yellendu) and Chirumarthi Lingaiah (Nakrekal) also announ-ced that they were going to join the TRS.

Meanwhile, former minister and Congress MLA Sabitha Indra Reddy also had a discussion with the TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao and TRS MP K. Kavitha in the presence of MIM chief and MP Asaduddin Owaisi and showed interest in joining TRS. With the four MLAs officially announcing that they were joining TRS, the Congress strength in the Assembly has come down to 15 from 19. If Ms Sabitha also takes a decision to leave the Congress, the total strength will further come down to 14. If three more MLAs join the TRS, the Congress will lose its recognition as the Opposition and Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka also will lose his status of the leader of opposition.

It may be recalled that TRS President and Chief Minister K. Chandra-sekhar Rao announced that six more Congress MLAs were ready to join the TRS.  According to TRS sources, Congress MLAs Jajala Surendar (Yellareddy), K Upendar Reddy (Palair), Dasari Anasuya (Seethakka-(Mulugu) and Podem Veeraiah (Bhadracha-lam) are likely to join the TRS. If all these four MLAs join the TRS and Sabitha Indra Reddy decides to continue in the Congress, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka will still lose Opposition leader status.

In fact TRS had prepared a sketch to see that the Congress did not get the main opposition status in the assembly after assembly results were declared. But during the first session of Telangana assembly, no Congress MLA defected and therefore the Congress got the main opposition status. In the MLC elections, TRS implemented its operation Akarsh and succeed in getting four MLAs to defect. TRS sources said in the coming days some more Congress MLAs also would join the TRS.

But the Congress leadership is not in a position to condemn the TRS speculations on defecting of Congress MLAs after noticing recent developments.