In a setback to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in Telangana, Warangal constituency Lok Sabha candidate Kadiyam Kavya resigned from the party on Thursday, March 28. Kadiyam Kavya is the daughter of Kadiyam Srihari, who is the BRS MLA from Station Ghanpur and former deputy chief minister of Telangana.
Srihari is also likely to quit BRS and the father-daughter duo is expected to join the Congress Party, who has not yet announced its candidate for the Warangal constituency.
“The party’s reputation has been damaged by reports of BRS leaders’ involvement in phone tapping, land grabbing, liquor scam and corruption. There is no cooperation among the leaders in the district. I cannot contest in the given circumstances,” Kavya stated in her resignation letter addressed to the party president K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR).
On Friday, several Congress leaders including AICC in-charge for Telangana Deepa Das Munshi met Srihari at his residence and invited him to the party. Following the meeting with leaders, Srihari said, “For various reasons BRS is losing ground. I wish to consult my party activists and decide whether to join the Congress party.”
In the past few weeks, two prominent leaders defected from the BRS party in Warangal district, disgruntled with Kavya’s nomination. Sitting MP Pasnuri Dayakar and former Wardhannapet MLA Aroori Ramesh quit BRS as the party gave preference to Kadiyam Kavya, a debutante.
“I joined TRS during the Telangana agitation for a separate state. The party preferred Kadiyam Srihari’s daughter Kavya who never took part in the movement. I wish the seat would be allocated to anybody else who took part in the movement,” Pasnuri Dayakar had said when he quit BRS. Aroori Ramesh will contest the Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket from Warangal.
In the 2023 Asembly elections, BRS fielded Kadiyam Srihari from the Station Ghanpur (SC) seat in place of the previous MLA, Thatikonda Rajaiah. Ahead of Lok Sabha elections, Rajaiah quit the party in February, 2024 and met Telangana CM Revanth Reddy, Deputy CM Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, and Karnataka Feputy CM DK Shiva Kumar.
Meanwhile, another father and daughter duo, senior BRS leader K Keshava Rao and Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) mayor Gadwal Vijaya Laxmi quit the party on Thursday and announced their decision to join Congress.
Reacting to defections in the party, BRS working president KT Rama Rao (KTR) warned that the leaders will not be welcomed if they returned, “We will not allow them even if they returned. “We will not allow them even if they plead by touching KCR’s feet,” KTR said at a party meeting.