At least four MLAs and a member of Legislative Council (MLC), all belonging to the Opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Telangana state, switched their loyalties in favour of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) on Thursday.
The development comes just a day ahead of the proposed Bus Yatra across Telangana by the TDP leadership, which seeks to target chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR) and his government for farmers' distress on account of power shortage among other things.
The group of legislators, led by senior leader Talasani Srinivasa Yadav, said they decided to back the ruling party as they were being put to pressure unreasonably by the TDP leadership to target the Telangana government for the ongoing power crisis even while denying Telangana its due share of electricity generated by the power plants in Andhra Pradesh.
"On the one side, the Andhra Pradesh government is honouring the power-sharing formula according to which 54 per cent of power generated in all plants having supply agreements with the power utilities of the combined state should come to Telangana. While the farmers in Telangana are suffering the crop damages on account of denial of the rightful share in power to the state, the same leadership of ours is asking us to target the Telangana government for this unfortunate situation, which is very painful," Yadav said, while hitting out at the TDP leadership.
He further alleged that the AP government was delaying the commercial operation date (COD) of the 1,600-Mw Krishnapatnam power project set up by the state-owned APGenco only to deny the share of power to Telangana. The AP government denied these allegations.
Those who switched their loyalties on Thursday include Maheshwaram MLA Tigala Krishna Reddy, Rajendranagar MLA Prakash Goud, Parkal MLA Dharma Reddy and Gangadhar Goud, an MLC hailing from Nizamabad district. With these defections, TDP receives a major set back in Hyderabad and surrounding areas where it had performed well in the last Assembly elections. The party is till left with three MLAs representing the city.
The TRS leadership has unleashed the fresh wave of counter offensive against TDP, coinciding with the party's plenary meeting, which is now scheduled to be held on October 18-19 instead of October 11 and 12 according to the last minute changes. According to the sources in TRS, efforts are on to bring at nine out of the 15 TDP MLAs in Telangana to their side by the time of the party plenary meeting. A senior TDP leader from Telangana admitted that they had doubts over a couple of more MLAs as they too were out of touch with the party leadership in recent times.
Within weeks of forming the government in June this year, the TRS leadership began its 'Operation Aakarsh, as the poaching of MLAs and MLCs from other parties is being dubbed by the media. In the first wave, It had successfully got nine MLCs, five of those from the Congress party, on its side in a bid to get a majority in the Congress-dominated Legislative Council. Two MLAs, who won on BSP tickets, joined TRS followed by three more MLAs two from Congress and one from YSR CP announced switched their loyalties in favour of the ruling party. TRS strength goes up further from its original tally of 63 in the 119-member state Legislative Assembly.
The ruling TDP in Andhra Pradesh used a similar poaching strategy against the opposition YSR Congress in the truncated state initially.
