Telangana Speaker’s dismissal of disqualification petitions of BRS MLAs is hypocrisy

I think expecting the lawful course of action in India is like playing a game of roulette. You never know when it will actually go, because the law is used however anyone wants to use it as per their convenience. I am of course referring to the Telangana Speaker’s decision to dismiss the disqualification petitions against BRS MLAs who had defected to the ruling Congress.

10 MLAs of the BRS one by one quit and joined the Congress, all in public view. There are photos, there are statements and what not. I thought these would be taken into consideration by the Telangana Speaker before rejecting the Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s (BRS) petitions seeking disqualification as per the anti-defection law to prevent exactly this.

I’m surprised not that the Speaker would not have known that there is ample evidence to see that BRS MLAs had defected publicly, but that at how we as voters are taken for granted and for a ride this way. The Congress in India positions itself as the champion of democracy against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but its own state government here is diluting the same democracy it vows to protect.

In the 2023 Telangana elections, the Congress won 64 seats and came to power. The BRS was not far at 39 seats. And given that the opposition party’s own president and ex-Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) had engineered defections during his two terms, we knew that the grand old party would do the same thing.

I’m sure the Congress, headed by incumbent CM Revanth Reddy, would have loved to empty out the BRS side, especially to make sure that the anti-defection law would not come into effect. According to the law, legislators who switch sides after winning their seats have to resign and recontest. It does not apply if two-thirds of the legislature defects however.

KCR managed to do it after the 2018 state elections when he got 12 out of 19 Congress MLAs to defect, virtually reducing the grand old party to almost shreds. I’m sure Revanth Reddy also was hoping to do the same, but the BRS MLAs stopped at 10. And let’s not say ‘so what, both sides did it’, because then what is the point of the laws to exist?

The Telangana Speaker’s blatant disregard of evidence showing BRS MLAs openly switching sides means that had in fact defected. Heck, one of them, Danam Nagender, even contested as the Congress candidate for the Secunderabad seat during the Lok Sabha elections. How is he still a BRS member then? Kuch bhi? I guess it’s a ‘see no evil, do no evil’ situation.

It is absolutely astounding to believe that the Speaker does not read the news. If he did, maybe he would have read Kadiam Srihari’s statement on strengthening the Congress in the state. I would expect this from a BJP ruled state, but I guess at their core the Congress is really no different and pretty much inclined to subverting laws when it is convenient for itself.

Also, there are no brownie points for the BRS, given that it has also shown very authoritarian tendencies when it was in power earlier. It is also no different perhaps, and I will of course censure it when the time comes. But the Congress is in power, and accountability is equally important in democracy.

(The opinions expressed in the article are solely of the author, and do not reflect those of the publication in any way whatsoever).