Hyderabad, March 23: At a time when the expose of cash-for-vote scandal by Wikileaks was rocking parliament last week, a similar episode came to light in the Andhra Pradesh assembly which attracted little attention in the national media.
Three Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MLAs were suspended from the party on the charges of indulging in cross voting in favour of the Congress party candidate in the MLC elections that were held on March 17. The TRS fielded its candidate Mahmood Ali though it had only 11 MLAs in the 294-member assembly and it still required the support of another 16 MLAs to win.
It could manage three more votes – two from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and one from rebel MLA from Telugu Desam Party (TDP) Pocharam Srinivas Reddy. Thus, the TRS candidate should have got 14 votes. To his astonishment, he got only 11 votes. Initially it was suspected that the two BJP members and the rebel TDP legislator had ditched the TRS, but they firmly told TRS president K Chandrasekhara Rao that they had voted only for Mahmood Ali. A few hours later, KCR could establish that the three black sheep were none other than his own party MLAs – K. Vidyasagar Rao E Ravinder Reddy and Kaveti Sammaiah.
There were allegations that the three MLAs were paid Rs 1.5 crore each for voting for the Congress candidate. After prolonged discussion in the party politburo, KCR suspended the erring MLAs. The suspended leaders tried to defend themselves, but their voice was too feeble to cover up their guilt.
And KCR blamed none other than Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy for indulging in horse trading. In fact, the TRS president had fielded Mahmood Ali only to pre- empt his MLAs from being sold out, since every vote was crucial for the Congress to win the five MLC seats.
For the TRS, the development has come as a major embarrassment at a time when the movement for a separate Telangana state has reached its peak.
Though the TRS president took swift measures to control the damage by suspending the three MLAs, it has definitely exposed how vulnerable the party leaders are. And there has been an attack on the TRS from all sides for sabotaging the Telangana movement for the sake of money and positions, forcing KCR to go on the defensive. It will take quite some time for KCR to salvage his prestige.
Interestingly, cross voting in the MLC elections was not confined to the TRS MLAs alone.
At least a dozen Congress MLAs owing allegiance to YSR Congress Party president and former Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy had blatantly violated the party directions.
THEY VOTED against the party candidate Md Jani in the MLC elections and instead voted for MIM candidate Mohammad Altaf Rizvi, as a result of which the latter could get 10 additional votes than the required number of 27 votes, while Md Jani had fallen short of the same. Thanks to last minute maneuvering in the second preferential votes, the Congress candidate managed to win the seat by 0.77 points over his TDP rival Pratibha Bharati.
Even the TDP and the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) could not escape the MLAs’ cross voting spree. Two of the TDP MLAs – N Prasanna Kumar Reddy and Y Balanagi Reddy and two PRP MLAs – Shobha Nagi Reddy and K Rami Reddy – had jumped into the Jagan camp and voted as per his directions.
At least the TRS president suspended the erring MLAs, but the Congress, TDP and PRP could not take any action against the rebel MLAs, who defied the party whip and voted for other candidates. That is the sorry state of affairs in the Andhra politics!
–Agencies–