Veteran Congress leader from Telangana, Marri Shashidhar Reddy, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday, November 25. During the ceremony in Hyderabad, he accused his former party of failing to check the alleged misrule of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in the state. Union ministers Sarbananda Sonowal and G Kishan Reddy were present at the party headquarters when Reddy joined the party.
Reddy had tendered his resignation to the Indian National Congress (INC) party on November 22, days after he was expelled from Congress, following his meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi.Soon after this, he was expelled from the Congress for a period of six years, citing anti-party activities. Soon after, Shashidhar Reddy sent his resignation to the party president, Mallikarjun Kharge, and veteran congress leader Sonia Gandhi, as earlier reported.
"Congress has totally failed to prevent what is happening in Telangana," the leader said, alleging that the TRS is running the “most corrupt government”. He also accused Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao of putting his family before the people of the state, and that “only the BJP can show the TRS its place.”
BJP leader and Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that Reddy's joining will strengthen the BJP in Telangana, and that TRS’s ‘family rule’ in the state would come to an end. He asserted that the BJP is going to form the next government in the state.
Shashidhar Reddy, 73, is the son of the late Congress chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, Marri Channa Reddy. He has been a four-time Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Sanathnagar, was a Congress minister in undivided Andhra Pradesh in 1993, and served as a vice-chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
Earlier in August, another congress leader, Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy, who was Mungode MLA also shifted to BJP party resulting in bye polls in the constituency. However, Rajagopal Reddy lost to TRS candidate Prabhakar Reddy in the bye-poll.
(With PTI inputs)