Hyderabad: The Banjara Hills police arrested 12 Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leaders when they tried to stop the convoy of chief minister A Revanth Reddy when he went to visit former BRS Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy at his residence after news broke that he was joining the ruling Congress on Friday morning.
Former BRS MLA Balka Suman, and other party leadeers – Manne Govardhan Reddy, K Vasudeva Reddy, Gellu Srinivas Yadav, Anjaneya Goud, Kadari Swamy Yadav, Thunga Balu, D Raju, K Jangaiah, Varikuppala Vasu, Chattari Dasarath and Dudimetla Balaraj Yadav – were taken into custody.
The police booked them under sections 353 (obstructing public servant from discharging duties) and 448 r/w 34 (committing house trespass) of IPC.
However, the chief minister’s office has sought a report from the ACP on security breach at Pocharam’s residence, as Balka Suman had somehow managed to enter the house even as Revanth Reddy was inside the house. West zone DCP Vijay Kumar went to the house to see how Suman breached the security.
The former BRS Speaker’s defection is a big blow to the BRS which has been reeling with setback after setback after it lost last year’s Assembly elections to the Congress. While a few MLAs and a few MPs had already quit and joined the Congress and the BJP in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections in May this year, more BRS legislators are likely to join the ruling party in the coming state.
However, defections are not new, as BRS chief and ex-Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao had engineered large scale defections from the Congress and other parties when he was heading the state between 2014 and 2023.
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