Two TRS MLAs skip voting in Prez poll; parties say no deviation

HYDERABAD: Two Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) MLAs skipped the polling for Presidential election held in the Legislative Assembly on Monday while all MLAs of the Congress, the BJP and the AIMIM exercised their franchises. All parties which reviewed the polling trend remained confident that there was no cross-voting by their MLAs and all of them voted for candidates as per party's decision and not on their personal decision.

While the TRS, the Congress and the AIMIM supported joint Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha, the BJP was the only one to support NDA candidate Droupadi Murmu.

Out of 119 MLAs in the Legislative Assembly, the TRS has a strength of 103 MLAs. Of them, 101 exercised their franchises while two MLAs, namely civil supplies minister Gangula Kamalakar and Vemulawada MLA Chennamaneni Ramesh remained absent. TRS sources said while Kamalakar could not make it as he was tested positive for Covid and remained in isolation, Ramesh was travelling abroad on some personal work.

Interestingly, Ramesh is already facing 'dual citizenship' and 'disqualification' cases since 2008 due to his frequent visits and stays in Germany and he remained abroad even on the crucial Presidential polling day.

All the seven MLAs belonging to the AIMIM, six MLAs of the Congress and three of BJP took part in the voting.

While non-BJP parties are confident of Yashwant Sinha getting 114 votes (TRS 101+AIMIM 7+Congress 6) out of 117 polled, the BJP expects to get more than its strength of three votes due to cross-voting by a few MLAs in other parties.

However, non-BJP parties completely ruled out the possibility of cross-voting in favour of the BJP-led NDA candidate.

All the parties took enough precautions to prevent cross-voting by issuing stern warnings to their MLAs. Earlier, TRS working president K.T.Rama Rao held a meeting with the party's 101 MLAs at Telangana Bhavan, read out party president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao's decision to back Yashwant Sinha and asked them to vote accordingly. He warned MLAs against cross-voting and said the party leadership would view such 'anti-party activities' very seriously.

Rama Rao conducted mock polling at Telangana Bhavan to educate MLAs on how to vote properly using marker pen on ballot paper to ensure that no MLA casts 'invalid vote'.

Later, all TRS MLAs led by Rama Rao were shifted from Telangana Bhavan to Legislative Assembly in three buses. Rama Rao was the first one to cast his vote in the polling followed by other MLAs and ministers.

Chandrashekar Rao arrived at the Legislative Assembly straight from Hanamkonda to cast his vote. He was staying at Hanamkonda since Sunday to visit flood-affected districts.