Turncoats in court; Congress plays dumb
Telangana HC is hearing challenges to the Speaker’s cleanup job that let 10 BRS MLAs walk. The case is simple: switch teams in public, you switch under the Tenth Schedule. The Congress would prefer nobody noticed.
The High Court is examining challenges to the Speaker’s decisions in the cross-over cases.
The Telangana High Court is examining petitions by BRS legislators and BJP MLA Alleti Maheshwar Reddy against the Assembly Speaker’s rejections of disqualification pleas involving 10 MLAs who, the petitioners say, crossed over to the Congress. According to the Supreme Court’s own record of the dispute, the disqualification complaints were filed in March–April 2024, with an additional plea on Danam Nagender in July 2024, and the prayer was straightforward: declare those who joined the Congress disqualified under the Tenth Schedule.
By March 11, 2026, Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar had dismissed the last two pending petitions (against Danam Nagender and Kadiyam Srihari), completing the clean sweep for all 10. Reports attribute his reasoning to a lack of “conclusive documentary evidence”. The petitioners call those orders arbitrary and contrary to the Tenth Schedule and are now before the High Court to set them aside. On March 25, 2026, the High Court issued notices to seven of the MLAs and to the Speaker, tagging the petitions and listing them for further hearing. Subsequent hearings have continued; the court on August 12 took up arguments that public conduct — from donning Congress scarves to, in Nagender’s case, contesting a Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket — amounts to voluntarily giving up BRS membership.
Counsel for the petitioners also argued the Speaker invented an “imaginary interpretation” by pretending he could ignore conduct outside the House. The Speaker’s side, for its part, says he acted as a neutral tribunal. The Congress camp, whose arithmetic benefited from every delayed decision and every dismissal, has not bothered to explain how contesting on its ticket is anything but a public exit from BRS.
For the record: these are submissions, not findings — the High Court has not yet ruled on disqualification. But the legal question is not exotic. The Supreme Court has already recorded the structure of the case and the timeline; the Tenth Schedule says what it says. Telangana’s interest is clean lines and clean floors, not revolving doors. The BJP-led Centre loves “morality” lectures when it suits it; it can start by welcoming swift anti-defection rulings anywhere, including here. The TDP can spare the sermons too — engineering headcounts next door doesn’t convert into ethics in Telangana.
One concrete point amid the fog: Danam Nagender’s decision to fight a parliamentary election on a Congress ticket is an admitted public act; whether that alone triggers disqualification is exactly what the High Court is weighing. A fresh court ruling between August 19 and 21 was not located in this sweep — the case continues, unlike the Congress’s patience for anti-defection rules when they get in its way.