It has been a long time since one has heard about veteran Telangana leader and Rajya Sabha member D Srinivas.
Though technically he is a member of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi, he has been completely sidelined in the party, ever since his younger son Dharmapuri Arvind defeated TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter Kalvakuntla Kavitha in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Nizamabad.
TRS leadership has neither sacked DS from the party on disciplinary grounds nor sought his disqualification from Rajya Sabha membership.
Yet, he is not being invited to any of the party meetings including parliamentary party meetings, despite being an MP. He has been simply ignored.
There was a talk that DS, too, would join the Bharatiya Janata Party following his younger son, he did not do it because he would lose the Rajya Sabha seat. His elder son D Sanjay, too, has quit the TRS and is planning to join the Congress again.
The latest talk is that DS is contemplating returning to his parent party – the Congress, which appears to have bright chances of coming to power in Telangana in the next elections.
The meeting of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president A Revanth Reddy with DS led to this talk.
Revanth Reddy went to DS’ residence and held talks with him for over an hour on Friday. He is learnt to have asked the veteran leader to return to the Congress, where he would be treated with respect.
However, DS said he still had nearly eight months of tenure as the Rajya Sabha member and he might take a call by then. But Revanth requested him to join the Congress at the earliest, so that it would send a right message to all the party cadres.
If DS makes up his mind, he might resign from the Rajya Sabha membership and join the Congress. Since only a few months is left for RS elections, the Election Commission might not hold by-polls for the same, sources said.
