With the Congress decimated in Telangana and left with only six MLAs in the 119-member Legislative Assembly, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) led by Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, is now planning to stake claim to the 'Opposition' party status in the House.
Ironically though, the AIMIM, which presently has seven MLAs, is considered a friendly party to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) with Owaisi and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao often supporting each other on various issues.
Speaking to ANI on Saturday, Owaisi said, "We will request the Speaker of Telangana Assembly to give AIMIM the post of Leader of Opposition as we are the second largest party in the state. We have more numbers than Congress. Our party will meet the Speaker and we expect that he will take positive action."
However, the AIMIM, which is now the second largest party in the state, is yet to take a call on who will be the Leader of Opposition. Two names being considered are Akbaruddin Owaisi, Asaduddin's younger brother, and Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, the senior-most legislator in the House.
Party sources told TNM that it will be Akbaruddin who will most likely be nominated for the post. TNM has also reached out to the Telangana unit of the Congress for a response to the latest development.
Earlier this week, 12 out of the 18 Congress MLAs in Telangana met the Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy and requested to be merged with the TRS.
The development came a day after Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) chief N. Uttam Kumar Reddy resigned from the Assembly after he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Nalgonda in the recent elections.
This brought down Congress' strength to 18 and worked in favour of the defectors to seek Congress Legislature Party's (CLP) merger with the TRS.
A party needs one-tenth of the strength of a House to have the main opposition status.
The TRS won 88 out of the 119 seats in last year's Assembly elections. After the polls, two independents and one of the two Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MLAs switched to TRS. If 12 Congress MLAs further join the TRS, the strength of the ruling party in the Telangana Assembly would go up to 103, bringing down the Congress' tally to six. Earlier, the CLP in the state Legislative Council merged with the TRS in a similar manner.
The merger was approved under paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India. The paragraph in the Constitution being cited by the legislators jumping ship, deals with defection of elected representatives, and says that disqualification on ground of defection need not apply in case of a merger of 2/3rd of the Legislative Party with another.