Expelled Telangana Congress MLAs – Komatireddy Venkat Reddy from Nalgonda and S A Sampath Kumar from Alampur assembly constituencies – may not have a chance to step into the state legislative assembly again, if Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has his way.
KCR is moving all his pawns to ensure that the two MLAs, who were expelled from the assembly for their alleged misconduct on the first day of the assembly budget session on May 12, will not come back into the House.
On Thursday, the KCR government moved a division bench of the Hyderabad high court challenging the earlier verdict of the single judge bench restoring the assembly membership of two Congress MLAs.
The division bench, which admitted the petition, posted the case to August 21 for hearing the arguments of both the sides.
KCR has already expressed his view that the courts have no jurisdiction to probe into the decisions taken by the state legislature, which has all the powers to decide on taking disciplinary action against the erring MLAs.
He will see that the case is dragged as long as possible. Even if the division bench dismisses the petition, he will have the option of moving the Supreme Court, where it will take further more time.
In the meantime, KCR is also contemplating dissolving the assembly and recommend for early elections to the state assembly.
Once the assembly is dissolved, Komatireddy and Sampath’s petitions will become infructuous and they will not get any chance to come to the House again, unless they are re-elected.
At the most, they might get back their salary and allowances for the period of expulsion!
