Shabbir Ali Hits Out at BRS for Criticising Danam’s Switch to Congress

Hyderabad: Senior Congress leader and government adviser Mohammed Ali Shabbir has ridiculed the criticism of BRS leaders on the return of Khairatabad MLA Danam Nagender to the Congress fold, saying former chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao could be crowned as the mastermind behind engineering defections.

In a statement, Shabbir Ali said that Rao had initiated the culture of defection shortly after assuming power in June 2014. Between 2014 and 2018, he engineered the defection of four MPs, 25 MLAs, and 18 MLCs. In his second term, he had encouraged 14 MLAs, including 12 from the Congress, to defect.

The BRS also made thousands of sarpanches, ZPTCs, MPTCs, councillors, corporators and other leaders defect to the BRS from the then opposition parties, Shabbir said and added that the BRS had survived on the basis of defections.

"KCR decimated the entire opposition. He could not tolerate the presence of any opposition… He engineered the defection of 12 Congress MLAs to deprive Dalit leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka of the Leader of Opposition status. He induced Congress MLCs to defect to prevent me, a Muslim leader, from assuming the position of the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council, despite only one month remaining in my term," Shabbir Ali said.

He remarked that the BRS leaders had “shamelessly” filed a disqualification petition against Danam Nagender and demanded that Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar take action within three months. He recalled that Talasani Srinivas Yadav, who was elected on a Telugu Desam ticket, was inducted into Rao's Cabinet without resigning as MLA. He unlawfully served as a cabinet minister for over a year.

Shabbir Ali noted that BRS leaders had subtly threatened to topple the Revanth Reddy government, insinuating that the Congress had a slim majority and its government would collapse if five or six legislators rebelled. “By doing so, they hinted at the possibility of luring some MLAs to create political instability. Given everyone's awareness of Rao's penchant for engineering defections, the Congress is taking precautions to ensure stability,” he said.