Hyderabad: In a veiled reference to the downfall of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the state, Telangana Chief minister A Revanth Reddy, also questioned how the main opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) will survive, more or less stating that it will fall just like the TDP and the Janata Party before it in the state. His statement is seen by political pundits as a statement of revenge for the BRS virtually ending the TDP in Telangana by poaching all of its leaders.
Revanth Reddy, who was the TDP’s working president in Telangana before he joined the Congress in 2018, made this prediction during the inauguration of a manufacturing unit of SGD-Corning Technologies Private Limited at Vemula village of Moosapet mandal in Mahabubnagar district on Wednesday, September 3.
“There are political parties which have become extinct. After the fall of Janata Party, TDP emerged as a great party which gave opportunities to many leaders. But because of the conspiracy hatched by some people, the party’s existence had become a question in Telangana. BRS will meet the same fate because of the sins it has committed,” he said.
After the formation of Telangana, the BRS (then called TRS), came to power with 63 out of 119 seats. The TDP and Congress then managed to win 15 and 21 seats in the state elections. However, within a few years BRS supremo and then CM K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) managed to poach most of the opposition MLAs, which eventually led to the TDP shutting shop here.
While Revanth Reddy’s comments were cryptic, concealing the identities of the individuals who conspired against the TDP, and now the BRS, political pundits saw it as an attempt to draw the original TDP vote-bank (mostly senior citizens), towards the Congress in Telangana.
A similar attempt was made by former Telangana chief minister KCR after the “vote for note” case gainst the TDP and Revanth, Revanth Reddy, who was the then TDP MLA from Kodangal. He was accused of trying to lure the lone nominated MLA Elvis Stephenson with Rs 5 crore, by paying him Rs 50 lakh in cash – to vote for a TDP nominated MLC candidate in 2015.
The allegation against Revanth Reddy was that he tried to bribe the MLA at the behest of the then TDP Telangana president N Chandrababu Naidu. Naidu shifted his base from Hyderabad to Andhra after that case, which is still running in the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Court in the Nampally Criminal Court of Hyderabad. The case is still waiting for a closure after a decade of the alleged crime.
Soon after the exit of Chandrababu Naidu from Telangana politics, there was a vacuum in Telangana TDP unit. That was an opportunity used by KCR, to attract Telangana TDP leaders like former MLA Motkupalli Narasimhulu, Errabelli Dayakar Rao, L Ramana, Kadiyam Srihari, and many other tall leaders from TDP, to join the TRS (now BRS). Revanth went on to join the Congress.
Revanth Reddy has been known to be a loyalist of Chandrababu Naidu, and as a person who has seen the politics of Palamuru region presently comprising five districts of the erstwhile Mahabubnagar district, since he was serving as the Zila Parishad Taluk Committee (ZPTC) member from Midgil mandal in Mahabubnagar district in the mid 2000s.
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