Hyderabad: The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti, which had won a landslide victory in the recent Assembly polls, recorded another victory in the biennial elections for the Telangana Legislative Council on Tuesday, bagging all five MLC seats under the MLA’s quota along with its ally All India MIM (AIMIM).
The TRS has achieved its aim of denuding the Congress of its status as leader of the Opposition by winning all five seats.
Moreover, there will no member from the Congress in the Legislative Council after March 29 when two Congress MLCs, Mohammed Ali Shabbier and P. Sudhakar Reddy, retire.
The Election Commission declared that TRS candidates home minister Mohammed Mah-mood Ali, Seri Subhash Reddy, Satyavathi Rathore, Yegge Mallesham and the MIM nominee, Mirza Riyaz ul Hasan Effendi, have been elected.
With the Congress boycotting the election, and the lone BJP MLA and Telugu Desam MLAs abstaining from the election, the polling was totally one-sided.
Ninety-one MLAs, including Chief Minister Chandrasekhar Rao, speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy and TRS party working president K.T. Rama Rao and seven MLAs of the MIM cast their votes.
Mahamood Ali, Seri Subhash Reddy and Ms Satyavathi Rathore secured 20 votes and Yegge Mallesham and the MIM nominee Mirza Riyaz ul Hasan Effendi got 19 votes each. The voting was over before lunch but was kept open till 4pm as per the schedule.
Alleging that TRS had adopted unconstitutional and unethical means to encourage defection of its MLAs, Congress on Monday had announced it would boycott the poll.
The MLAs who had defected also abstained from voting in case they were accused of violation of the whip. The 22 absentee members included Congress (19), TD (2) and BJP (1).
The Council election generated political heat following the decision of four Congress MLAs and a TD MLA to switch over to the ruling TRS in the run-up to the poll.
