HYDERABAD: Ending weeks-long suspense, Congress leader Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy on Tuesday announced his resignation as Munugode MLA and from the primary membership of the party as well. His announcement came hours after the Congress high command held a meeting in Delhi and decided either to suspend or expel him. Though he did not say it in as many words, Rajagopal is all set to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). His resignation also implies that a bypoll in the Munugode Assembly constituency is now inevitable.
Speaking to the media at his residence, after returning from his constituency, Rajagopal claimed that he was announcing the decision a week earlier than planned as a “smear campaign” against him had been launched on social media. He will submit his resignation to the Speaker soon.“The TRS government develops only those Assembly constituencies which are set for byelections. Hence, in the public interest, I am resigning from my MLA post, though I still have 18 months of tenure,” Rajagopal said.
Explaining what had propelled him to leave the Congress, Rajagopal stated that the party high command didn’t take either him or any other senior leader into confidence on any issue. He accused the party of not making any efforts to persuade the 12 MLAs who had switched their loyalties to the ruling TRS to stay back.
“Those who lost elections and criticised Sonia Gandhi were given top posts in the party, and we were asked to work under them. While we fought for self-respect, there is no self-respect in the Congress,” he rued and claimed that he had been treated unfairly by the party despite his best efforts to bolster it morally and economically. In the same breath, he reaffirmed his respect for the Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
When asked if his brother Komatireddy Venkat Reddy also held similar views, Rajagopal said he would not speak for his brother. Objecting to the “rumours” surrounding his imminent defection to the BJP, Rajagopal denied that he was after contracts worth thousands of crores. He said that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had once asked him to join the TRS along with the 12 other Congress MLAs, yet he continued to stay in the party.
“My family and I are clean. We don’t need to join any party to get a contract. The contract in question was an open global tender. My son runs the company which has projects in the North-East region, Jharkhand and I can come to clarify anyone’s suspicion with documents,” he asserted.
Perhaps keeping the upcoming election in mind, Rajagopal devoted a good part of his almost one-and-a-half-hour-long presser to bashing the TRS supremo and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
“CM KCR is ruining the financial status of Telangana, turning it into another Sri Lanka. This will lead to a major economic crisis as he is driving the State into debts,” Rajagopal alleged. He said that the dream of separate Telangana State had only benefited the Chief Minister’s family.
100 TRS, Congress leaders ready to join BJP?
With a list of over 100 probables who have agreed in principle to don the saffron robes, Eatala Rajender and other members of the BJP’s ‘Joining and Coordination Committee’ are likely to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda on Wednesday. According to sources, the BJP leaders have persuaded about 30 former MLAs, MPs and Ministers from Congress and TRS, and around 70 other second-level leaders to join the party. The committee under the leadership of Eatala Rajender has taken approval of party State in-charge Tarun Chugh on Monday. It was speculated that a former TRS MP who was dejected over the recent political developments is likely to join the party very soon.