The “undemocratic” manner in which the Congress Legislature Party in the Telangana Legislative Council was merged with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi despite protests from the Congress party evoked an intense debate in the media circles, though nobody is willing to question it openly.
Though four Congress MLCs have joined the TRs officially, legislative council chairman Swamy Goud should have acknowledged it as en masse defection, rather than merger of the CLP with TRS LP.
Reason: there are still two Congress MLCs – Mohd Shabbir Ali and Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy, who still have three months’ time to complete their tenure.
If CLP is merged with the TRS LP, to which party these two MLAs belong? Are they not Congress MLCs? Or should they be treated as independents, which is against the rules? This is the debate going on in the political circles.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee treasurer Gudur Narayana Reddy wondered whether forcible acquisition of CLP by TRS had any legitimacy.
“Is this the qualitative change TRS president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao wants to bring about in national politics?” he asked.
The Congress leader accused KCR of transforming Telangana state into a dictatorship by smothering all democratic institutions.
The “merger” clearly showed how KCR was misusing the legislature, one of the pillars of democracy, as its slave.
"The Anti-Defection Law was not applied when as many as 25 MLAs and over two dozen MLCs defected to TRS since 2014. Neither the then speaker Madhusudan Chary nor council chairman Swamy Goud reacted on the disqualification petitions filed against defected members by the opposition parties,” he pointed out.
Reddy said Telangana was apparently the only State in the country where Constitution of India is not being implemented properly.
"KCR has no respect for the Constitution or any other democratic institutions. He has enslaved Legislature, Executive and Media and does not respect judiciary. This is nothing but dictatorship," he said.
