‘Joined Congress on stage, not in file?’
BRS tells High Court the Speaker looked only inside the House and missed the defections happening in full public view outside it. The case resumes after an adjournment — and the Congress government’s beneficiaries still haven’t explained how a Congress B‑form isn’t, well, Congress.
The disqualification petitions return to the Telangana High Court after an adjournment.
BRS has asked the Telangana High Court to set aside the Speaker’s handling of disqualification pleas against nine MLAs elected on BRS tickets and now aligned with the Congress. Senior counsel Gandra Mohan Rao argued before a division bench led by Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh that conduct outside the Assembly — joining another party, campaigning for it, even contesting on its ticket — is enough to establish “voluntarily giving up” party membership under the Tenth Schedule. A report of Monday’s hearing says the matter was adjourned to Tuesday.
The nine named are Danam Nagender, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, Kadiyam Srihari, Kale Yadaiah, Bandla Krishna Mohan Reddy, T. Prakash Goud, Arekapudi Gandhi, Tellam Venkat Rao and M. Sanjay Kumar, per that report. The Speaker had earlier dismissed several petitions, with his office stating there wasn’t “substantial evidence” the MLAs had changed parties. BRS’s counsel said the Speaker wrongly limited himself to what happened on the floor and ignored what happened on the stage and the campaign trail.
The Supreme Court record shows the disqualification fight began with petitions filed on March 18, April 2 and April 8, 2024, later joined by a separate plea against Danam Nagender. It also records that courts have prodded the process while noting the Speaker’s primacy under the Tenth Schedule. The paperwork we could access does not include the Speaker’s written orders in these nine cases, so the precise reasoning he used remains unpublished.
One detail BRS put up front: Danam Nagender contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha poll on a Congress B‑form while staying on as a BRS MLA. If that doesn’t count as “voluntarily giving up”, the rule may as well be renamed “only if you say it on the mic”.