BENGALURU: In wIn one more body blow to the Congress, parliamentarian KC Ramamurthy resigned from the party to join the BJP. The Rajya Sabha MP will have to seek fresh re-election on a BJP ticket after joining the party. After Sanjay Singh and B Kalita, Ramamurthy is the third Rajya Sabha MP to quit the Congress. His resignation was accepted by Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidu. Ramamurthy told TNIE, “I will join the BJP on Thursday or Friday. I had been considering it for some time.’’
The former IPS officer turned MP has 2 years 8 months left of his 6-year Rajya Sabha tenure, and was elected with the help of Congress and ‘rebel’ JDS votes in 2015. Congress leader VS Ugrappa said, “BJP is continuing with Operation Kamala (Lotus) to poach Congress leaders. We have information that they threatened Congress leaders like Ramamurthy with raids.” Ramamurthy’s resignation brings down the number of Karnakata Congress Rajya Sabha MPs from eight to seven.
The other MPs are Jairam Ramesh, Rajeev Gowda, L Hanumanthaiah, GC Chandrashekar, Dr Nasir Hussain, BK Hariprasad and Oscar Fernandes. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is a Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka BJP, the other two being Prabhakar Kore and R Chandrashekar. The total number of Rajya Sabha MPs from Karnataka is 12, with one JDS MP, Kupendra Reddy. The resignation is likely to hit the party, which is yet to recover from its MLAs quitting and bringing down the government. For the Congress, which is trying to shore up morale to fight the bypolls, the resignation could not have come at a worse time.