Telangana High Court on defection case of BRS MLAs

Hyderabad:

Three Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLAs, who had defected to the Congress and were served disqualification notices, got relief on Friday when the Telangana High Court stayed a single-judge bench's September order directing the Speaker for four weeks Instructions were given to settle this issue within.

A bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice J Srinivasa Rao said no such time limit can be fixed, but asked Speaker Gaddam Kumar to rule on the matter within a “reasonable time”.

Danam Nagender, Kadiam Srihari and TV Rao were elected from Khairatabad, Ghanpur station and Bhadrachalam in the elections held in November last year. But by April this year, all three joined the ruling Congress without resigning from their respective assembly seats.

In last year's elections, Congress had given a crushing defeat to BRS. The National Party won 64 out of 119 assembly seats. K. Chandrasekhar Rao's party, which won 88 seats in the last election, got only 39 seats this time and Bharatiya Janata Party and Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM got eight and seven seats respectively.

The petitions seeking disqualification of the three ex-BRS MLAs were filed by former associates and BJP allele Maheshwar Reddy. The High Court was approached after the Speaker was accused of inaction despite petitions filed under Schedule .

Those demanding disqualification argued that continuing to delay the decision on their petitions would give the ruling party time to persuade more MPs from rival parties to join them.

However, the Speaker argued that the High Court did not have the jurisdiction to issue such orders.

Overall, 10 MLAs joined the Congress from BRS after the assembly elections.

Read | Congress leader's 'shoe' reply to BRS leader's 'sari' comment

The defection triggered a fierce dispute between the parties; In September, following the order by a single-judge bench of the High Court, BRS's P Kaushik Reddy made a lewd and lascivious remark asking turncoats to wear sarees and bangles. The comment drew a sharp reaction from a Congress leader, who warned Mr Reddy that he would be physically attacked if he continued to insult women.

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