Congress Finds the Anti-Defection Law Under the Furniture
Danam Nagender’s disqualification leaves Telangana with a vacant seat and the ruling party with a constitutional headache.
The Congress government in Telangana has finally discovered the anti-defection law. It was apparently in the room all along, behind the sofa, beneath the government’s political arithmetic. The Supreme Court has upheld the disqualification of Danam Nagender, who won Khairatabad on a BRS ticket, joined Congress in March 2024 and contested the Lok Sabha election on the Congress ticket while continuing as an MLA. The Telangana High Court had already marked the seat vacant from 23 April 2024, the day he filed his nomination. The law was not obscure. It was merely inconvenient.
The real achievement belongs to Assembly Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar, whose March 11, 2026 decision rejected the disqualification petition. The High Court set that aside. The Supreme Court has now declined to interfere. Three institutions examined one defection and produced a procedural serial in which the central question was treated as an administrative suggestion. Congress’s working theory appeared to be that a person could change parties, carry on as an MLA and seek another elected office under the new party’s flag, provided the paperwork was kept sufficiently optimistic.
This is the Telangana version of constitutional principle: a defection is a threat to democracy when someone leaves Congress, and a welcome expansion of representation when someone joins it. The voter’s mandate is treated as transferable inventory. Khairatabad elected a BRS MLA; Congress accepted the political benefit of the switch without the tiresome interruption of asking Khairatabad again. The party’s slogan may be “Ab ki baar Congress”, but its institutional method was closer to “file it later”.
Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s government can now explain that the Speaker made the decision, the courts corrected it and everyone should respect the process. Certainly. The process has been respected so thoroughly that the seat is vacant, the court record is clear and the Speaker’s order has entered the archive of decisions that looked stronger before judges read them. Congress has not defended the arrangement as democratic. It has defended the arrangement as procedurally survivable.
The government has delivered one unmistakable result: a by-election, without first having to promise one.
More from The Column
- Andhra’s Teacher Jobs Enter Their Political Science Phase16,347 posts, 3.3 lakh applicants and one government determined to make paperwork a personality cult.
- Tollywood Announces The Hit Before Showing The FilmThe film may succeed. The publicity department has already booked the victory lap, the trophy and three sequel headlines.
- Revanth Reddy’s Permanent Solution Has No Arrival DateTelangana’s landowners received a 12-point plan, a history lesson and the administrative equivalent of a loading screen.
- Andhra’s Transparent Recruitment Comes With Seven ExplanationsWhen the marks do not fit the rules, the file apparently takes a scenic route through seven verification stages.