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Senior TDP legislator Revanth Reddy joins Congress
Revanth Reddy's entry will help bolster Congress's anti-TRS efforts and also add a legislator to its present 13 in the 120-member Telangana assembly
Hyderabad: Telugu Desam Party’s (TDP) former working president and legislator Revanth Reddy on Monday joined the Congress party, a fortnight after rumours began that he had met Congress leaders to negotiate his entry. He will leave for New Delhi on Tuesday to meet All India Congress Committee (AICC) vice-president Rahul Gandhi, a statement from Reddy’s office said.
TDP’s national spokesperson E. Peddi Reddy said Revanth Reddy handed in his resignation to the TDP’s secretary at a meeting in Vijayawada last week. “He told us at the meeting in Vijayawada that he was leaving for his personal ambition. We ended things on a good term. The TDP has no working president post. It was created to specifically promote Revanth,” he told Mint.
Last week, TDP leaders from Telangana had asked him to clarify on rumours that he was planning to join the Congress. Earlier, Reddy had accused TDP cabinet ministers in Andhra Pradesh of seeking favours from Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
With his departure, the TDP in Telangana is now left with just two MLAs, as 12 of its 15 legislators had defected to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) last year. The TDP, which claims to have 1 million active members in the state, will now have to find a new leader, as Reddy had led protests against the ruling TRS. Peddi Reddy, however, said that it will not affect the party much. “Such ups and downs happen in politics,” he added.
For the Congress, however, Reddy’s entry will help bolster its anti-TRS efforts and also add one more legislator to its present 13 (earlier, eight Congress MLAs had defected to the TRS) in the 120-member assembly. A senior Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) official, not willing to be named, said Reddy has asked for the post of working president. “It is yet to be decided,” he added. Currently, MLA Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka is TPCC working president.
After Telangana’s formation in 2014, Revanth Reddy was arrested in the so-called ‘cash-for-vote’ scam, in which he is accused of bribing nominated MLA Elvis Stephenson to seek his vote for the Telanagana Legislative Council election, which was held in 2015. While he has not made it public so far, political analysts who did not want to be named said that Reddy was miffed with the TDP leadership, and hence decided to jump ship.
A communication from Revanth Reddy’s office on Monday also said that along with him, seven state-level TRS leaders, and many other TDP leaders, including former MLAs and ministers, will also join the Congress. TPCC chief spokesperson Sravan Dasoju, welcomed Reddy in joining the Congress in Telangana, and added that others who “want to save democracy” in the state are most welcome to join the party as well.
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First Published:30 Oct 2017, 11:25 PM IST
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