HYDERABAD: The two BRS leaders who were recently suspended from the party -- former minister Jupally Krishna Rao and former MP Ponguleti Srinivasa Reddy -- are waiting with fingers crossed for the outcome of the elections in Karnataka to take a call on which party they should join or whether they should stay as a separate group and fight the elections.
The close associates of both leaders said that they are assessing the cadre strength of the two parties.
Both leaders have contacted former MLAs and ticket aspirants in the BRS hoping to get them to join them so that they could emerge as a powerful group and dictate terms to either of the two national parties.
Krishna Rao, who served as a minister in the Congress regime in undivided Andhra Pradesh, is getting calls from his former colleagues to rejoin the grand old party.
He knows the entire Congress network in his constituency of Kollapur like the back of his hand as he was elected thrice as an MLA from there. Several Congress leaders remain his friends even though he joined the BRS in 2012.
On the other hand, BJP leaders, including party national vice-president DK Aruna, also welcomed him to BJP suggesting that they should bury the hatchet. When both Aruna and Jupally were ministers in the Congress regime, they did not see eye-to-eye as one saw the other as a threat to their dominance in the district. Srinivasa Reddy who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Khammam on a YSRC ticket, is taking advice from his close relatives who are in Congress as well as in the BJP, before making his next move.