In a world that’s all about instant gratification, politics seems to be the one long game that requires patience and plotting. And the coup pulled off by the TRS and Congress defectors to the TRS in Telangana is a perfect example of this. In the Assembly elections held in December last year, the Congress party managed to win just 19 of the 119 seats in the House. Slowly, Congress MLAs started shifting allegiance to the ruling TRS – and on Thursday, just a day after the strength of the Congress party in the House officially fell to 18 by the Congress’s own doing, the defectors moved in for the kill.
For months, despite the Congress raising the issue, Telangana Speaker Pocharam Srinivas – a TRS man – did not accept their demand to disqualify the MLAs as per the anti-defection law. Schedule 10 of the Constitution, which lays down the rules for what should be done with defectors, says that any MLA or MP who defects from a party should be disqualified by the Speaker. However, there is a rider: disqualification doesn’t arise if 2/3rd of the members of a particular party in the House say they are merging with another party.
The resignation of TPCC chief N Uttam Kumar from his MLA post on Wednesday, after he won the MP elections, reduced the Congress seat share from 19 to 18 in the Telangana Assembly. And in doing so, it reduced the 2/3rd figure from 13 to 12 – exactly the number of MLAs who had shifted loyalties to the TRS.
At the time when the All India Congress Committee (AICC) was selecting Lok Sabha candidates in the state, it was thought of as a masterstroke when Rahul Gandhi decided to field N Uttam Kumar Reddy, the TPCC president and Huzurabad MLA as the party's Nalgonda candidate. Uttam won, and became a Member of Parliament – but this victory has clearly come at a big price for the Congress.
On Thursday, as the 12 defectors petitioned the Speaker that they wanted to merge with the TRS officially, Pocharam Srinivas accepted this request. He allocated space for the 12 legislators along with members of the TRS in the House.
And so, not only has the Congress lost face by not being able to keep their tiny flock together in the state, they’ve also lost the status of main opposition in the House – a party needs 10% of the members for the status. Bhatti Vikramaka, the leader of the opposition, stands to lose his Cabinet rank.
And the Telangana Chief Minister now has little opposition in the state Assembly.
"It all depended on whether the faction that wants to defect has a 2/3rd majority or not," said MR Madhavan, co-founder and president of PRS Legislative Research, a public policy research organisation. "In the end, as per the Constitution, it all depends on the Speaker. This decision of the Speaker can be challenged in the courts – but on the grounds that the defectors did not meet the 2/3rd majority," he added.
The twelve members of the Congress Legislative Party who have defected to the TRS are:
1. Kandala Upender Reddy
2. Jajala Surender
3. Haripriya Banoth
4. Devi Reddy Sudheer Reddy
5. Gandra Venkata Ramana Reddy
6. Chirumarthi Lingaiah
7. Kantha Rao Rega
8. Patiolla Sabitha Indra Reddy
9. Athram Sakku
10. Beeram Harshavardhan Reddy
11. Vanama Venkateswara Rao
12. Rohith Reddy
The Congress had raised several complaints with the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Governor ESL Narasimhan, and the Speaker, but has been unsuccessful in averting mass defections. The party accuses the TRS of engineering these defections within the Congress, a claim rubbished by the TRS who had initially won 88 seats in the Telangana Assembly.