Former Telangana MLA P Vishnuvardhan Reddy will join the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) after being denied a ticket by the Congress to contest the upcoming Telangana Assembly elections. He met Telangana Chief Minister and BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao at Camp Office on Sunday, as per his post on a social media site.
As per a description on his social media accounts, P Vishnuvardhan Reddy is a senior Congress leader and former MLA from Khairatabad and Jubilee Hills.
He was quoted by news agency ANI as saying on Monday, “I never imagined that the Congress would come to this state. The Congress will soon have to sell off the Gandhi Bhavan. We (Reddy and his followers) will join the BRS soon.”
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Telangana Minister Harish Rao and other BRS leaders visited Reddy’s residence in Jubilee Hills on Monday.
Speaking to media persons after the meeting, Harish Rao said the BRS will give a “respectable position” to Vishnuvardhan Reddy.
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“The Congress leaders say P Janardhan Reddy (Vishnuvardhan’s father) means the Congress and the Congress means PJR. He worked hard for the Congress, but the party has now been taken over by a few gangs that are meting out grave injustice to sincere and hard-working members like him,” Rao was quoted as saying.
“We will give a respectable position to Vishnuvardhan (in the BRS),” he added, saying that Nagam Janardhan Reddy also resigned from the Congress on Sunday, October 29, and joined the BRS. “PJR’s son Vishnu is also set to join the BRS. We’ll heartily welcome him into our party,” Harish Rao said.
The Congress has former captain of the Indian Men’s Cricket team Mohammad Azharuddin from the Jubilee Hills assembly constituency.
The Congress has also recieved the support of the Telangana Jana Samithi in the battle against the ruling BRS in the assembly polls. The Jana Samithi arrived at a decision to extend support to the Congress after party president M Kodandaram met the state chief of the grand old party, Revanth Reddy, on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Telangana unit of Telugu Desam Party decided not to contest the November 30 Assembly polls, TDP sources said on Sunday.
The 119-member Chhattisgarh Assembly will go to polls on November 30. The counting of votes for Telangana, along with those of four other poll-bound states, is scheduled for December 3.
The state is set to witness a triangular contest between the ruling BRS, the Congress, and the BJP. In the 2018 assembly elections, the BRS won 88 of the 119 seats, emerging victorious on 47.4 percent of the total vote share. The Congress finished a distant second with 19 seats and a vote share of 28.7 percent.
(With inputs from agencies)
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Updated: 30 Oct 2023, 07:59 PM IST
