Hyderabad: Assembly speaker G Prasad Kumar on Wednesday dismissed petitions seeking the disqualification of two BRS MLAs — Danam Nagender (Khairatabad) and Kadiyam Srihari (Station Ghanpur) — ruling that there was no evidence to prove that they had defected to Congress party.With this decision, the speaker effectively closed all disqualification cases filed against 10 BRS MLAs accused of switching loyalties after the Congress came to power in Telangana in Dec 2023, a move that is likely to intensify the political battle between the two parties. The BRS is now planning to challenge the speaker’s orders in the high court.The ruling comes a day before the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear the disqualification petitions. Earlier, the apex court had set a three-week deadline for the speaker to dispose of all pending petitions related to the alleged defections.Pronouncing his order, the speaker said there was no material to establish that the two MLAs had defected to another political party. He observed that the evidence placed before him did not conclusively prove that the legislators had formally joined the Congress and held that they continued to remain members of the BRS.With the latest decision, all petitions against the 10 BRS MLAs have now been dismissed by the speaker, who acts as the tribunal under the anti-defection law.Nagender and Srihari had faced political scrutiny over their actions during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Nagender had contested the Secunderabad Lok Sabha seat as a Congress candidate in the April 2024 polls, while Kadiyam had openly campaigned for his daughter, Kadiyam Kavya, who contested from the Warangal Lok Sabha constituency as a Congress candidate. However, both MLAs denied that they had defected to the Congress.Over the past three months, the speaker had disposed of petitions against eight other BRS MLAs in a phased manner. These include Tellam Venkat Rao (Bhadrachalam), Bandla Krishna Mohan Reddy (Gadwal), T Prakash Goud (Rajendranagar), Gudem Mahipal Reddy (Patancheru), Arekapudi Gandhi (Serilingampally), M Sanjay Kumar (Jagtial), Kale Yadaiah (Chevella), and Pocharam Srinivas Reddy (Banswada), all of whom were accused by the BRS of shifting allegiance to the ruling Congress.The controversy gained further political traction as some of these MLAs were later accommodated in govt positions. Pocharam was appointed adviser to the govt on agriculture issues, while Arekapudi was made chairman of the assembly public accounts committee.The disqualification petitions were filed last year by several BRS MLAs, including KP Vivekananda, Palla Rajeshwar Reddy, Kalvakuntla Sanjay, Chinta Prabhakar, P Kaushik Reddy, and G Jagadish Reddy. They submitted newspaper clippings, photographs and videos purportedly showing the legislators joining the Congress in the presence of chief minister A Revanth Reddy.Alleging delay on the part of the speaker in taking up the matter, the petitioners approached both the high court and the Supreme Court, following which the apex court set a deadline for disposal of the petitions.The MLAs facing disqualification, however, maintained that their meetings with the chief minister were only to seek funds for development works in their constituencies. They argued that newspaper clippings could not be treated as proof of defection and also claimed that the BRS leadership had neither issued them show-cause notices nor invited them to party meetings while continuing to claim that they were still members of the party.
