Hyderabad: Just 30 days ahead of the assembly polls in Telangana, some disgruntled leaders of the Congress who were denied tickets in the party’s first two lists of candidates, joined the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) along with their followers on October 31, Tuesday.
The list of leaders included former minister and veteran leader Nagam Janardhan Reddy, Jubilee Hills former MLA Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, and party activist Kotha Jaipal Reddy from Karimnagar district.
They joined the BRS in an event presided over by the party’s chief and Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao who took responsibility for the turncoats’ political future.
Deploring the knife attack on BRS MP Kotha Prabhakar Reddy who is a candidate in the upcoming assembly elections, BRS president and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Tuesday said negative forces who resort to such attacks should be taught a lesson.
Prabhakar Reddy, who is the BRS candidate in Dubbak assembly constituency, was stabbed by a 38-year-old man with a knife, while he was campaigning in Siddipet district on Monday.
Rao, also known as KCR, was speaking at an event here where former Congress leaders Nagam Janardhan Reddy and P Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, both denied tickets by Congress to contest in the November 30 polls, joined the BRS here.
“Some negative forces would always be there in politics. There are some who oppose. They, with a strange attitude, attacked our MP Prabhakar Reddy yesterday and tried to take his life. By god’s grace, he is out of danger. He is safe now. But this type of deplorable attacks are unprecedented. We should be alert to teach them a lesson,” Rao said.
“Achieving a great victory in the assembly elections would be a slap on the face of such negative forces,” he said.
Welcoming Janardhan Reddy and Vishnu Vardhan Reddy into BRS, Rao recalled that Janardhan Reddy had even gone to jail during the Telangana agitation in 1969.
The BRS president said that Vishnu Vardhan Reddy’s late father P Janardhan Reddy was a popular leader who had fought for Telangana and the interests of Hyderabad people with an uncompromising attitude.
While Nagam Janardhan was upset over the non-allocation of the Nagarkurnool ticket to him by the grand old party, Vishnu Vardhan was unhappy over the Jubilee Hills ticket going to the Indian cricket team’s former captain Mohammad Azharuddin.
(With excerpts from PTI)
