KCR Suspends Daughter Kavitha from BRS

The falling of the disciplinary axe on Kavitha and likely the final step in fully excising her from the BRS came a day after her outburst and allegations that two of Chandrashekar Rao’s closest aides, former irrigation minister T. Harish Rao, and former MP J. Santosh Kumar, her cousins, were the architects and ‘anacondas’ of corruption in the Kaleshwaram project.

The allegations proved to be the final provocation of the party’s leadership already reeling under the impact of the P.C. Ghose commission of inquiry into the Kaleshwaram project barrages with the report pinning much of the blame for the damage to the structures on Chandrashekar Rao and Harish Rao. The government, after a debate in the Assembly has since ordered a CBI probe into the Kaleshwaram affair.

Tempers that were running high since Monday among BRS workers supporting Harish Rao and those backing Kavitha in Telangana Jagruthi, spilled over onto the streets on Tuesday with supporters from both sides organizing impromptu protests against the leader on the other side. While in several BRS offices across the state party workers began taking down posters, pictures and banners with Kavitha’s image, in some places, Harish Rao’s supporters burnt her pictures while Jagruti workers paid back in the same coin setting fire to posters with Harish Rao’s picture on them

A terse and brief news release from the BRS, said suspension followed Kavitha’s recent behaviour and anti-party activities, and that these have been taken a serious view of by the party leadership.

“The party president K. Chandrashekar Rao has taken the decision to suspend Smt. K. Kavitha from the party with immediate effect,” the news release signed by party general secretaries Soma Bharat Kumar, and T Ravinder Rao said.

Kavitha’s comments on Monday, that could prove very damaging to the BRS, came in the wake of the government decision to call a CBI probe. She had said that corruption related to the project indulged in by Harish Rao and Santosh meant that Chandrashekar Rao had become the victim, and object of the CBI inquiry for no fault of his.

While her latest salvo may have triggered her suspension, the action appeared inevitable with Kavitha going hard, since this May, after ‘devils’ surrounding Chandrashekar Rao and how they were behind a campaign of harassment targeting her. Her initial target was party working president and her brother K.T Rama Rao, but on Monday, she zeroed in on Harish Rao and Santosh as the ‘devils’, clearly crossing a red line that even Chandrashekar Rao, as her father, could no longer ignore.