Congress leader A Revanth Reddy on Tuesday wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind and the Chief Election Commissioner seeking disqualification of six MLAs from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
Claiming that the six TRS legislators had been holding ‘office of profit’ as Parliamentary Secretaries, Revanth also alleged that three other MLAs were enjoying benefits of other posts.
The MLAs were identified as D Vinay Bhaskar, Jalagam Venkat Rao, V Srinivas Goud, G Kishore Kumar, V Satish Kumar and Kova Laxmi, who were appointed as parliamentary secretaries between December 2014 and May 2015.
The Congress leader also named three others for holding office of profit, including E Balakishan Rasamayi, head of the Telangana Culture department, Somarapu Satyanarayana who is the TSRTC chairman and Balkonda V Prashant Reddy as who was the panchayat raj rural development chairman.
Revanth Reddy also pointed out that the Hyderabad High Court struck down the appointments in May 2015, but some of the legislators have continued to enjoy their posts.
“It is clear in the law that holding an office of profit is illegal. There is no doubt about it. Therefore, on behalf of the Congress party, we will bring this to the Centre’s notice and demand their disqualification,” Revanth told reporters.
In his letter to the President, Reddy cited the recent disqualification of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs by the Election Commission and demanded the same action against the TRS MLAs.
Last week, in a big blow to Delhi’s ruling AAP, President Kovind approved the Election Commission’s recommendation to disqualify 20 of its MLAs in the office of profit case as Parliamentary Secretaries. While the BJP hailed the move, the AAP said it would approach the courts against it.
After the President’s approval, the Law and Justice Ministry issued a notification that the President held that the 20 MLAs stand disqualified under Section 15(1)(a) of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) Act.
“If required we will go to the Supreme Court. The Constitution is supreme and is the law of the land and has been protected by our judiciary time and again,” AAP party supremo Arvind Kejriwal said in his response.
In November last year, Revanth Reddy defected to the Congress party from the TDP amidst high political drama. The former state TDP working president joined the Congress in the presence of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi.