Hyderabad, March 20: Cracking the whip, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) tonight decided to suspend three of its MLAs for allegedly voting for Congress in the election to Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council.
The TRS politburo, which met at party chief K Chandrasekhar Rao’s residence for a marathon five hours, decided to suspend K Vidyasagar Rao, Y Ravinder Reddy and Kaveti Sammaiah, TRS sources said.
Earlier in the evening, the three MLAs submitted resignation from the House and said they would abide by whatever decision the party took.
Addressing the media at the end of the politburo meeting, Rao said resignation of the three MLAs would be forwarded to the Assembly Deputy Speaker for acceptance.
He alleged it was Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy who had lured the three MLAs to vote for the Congress candidate.
“We have concrete information in this regard and one of the three errant MLAs has accepted his guilt,” he claimed.
A storm had been brewing in TRS for the past two days following allegations that three of its MLAs cross voted in favour of a Congress candidate in an alleged “cash-for-vote” deal.
While Vidyasagar Rao and Y Ravinder Reddy submitted their resignation letter to TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao ahead of the party’s politburo meeting this evening, another legislator Sammaiah faxed it.
Vidyasagar Rao, a close relative of the TRS chief, and Ravinder Reddy told reporters that they would rather quit their posts than bear the insinuations that they had cross voted against the party.
“It is for our party president to take a decision now. It is totally baseless to say we voted against the TRS’ official candidate in the Council election. We voted strictly according to the code given to us. We cannot bear character assassination,” Vidyasagar Rao and Ravinder Reddy maintained.
TRS, which has only 11 MLAs in the AP Assembly, put up a candidate for the Council election hoping to garner votes from other parties on the “Telangana sentiment”.
Its plan, however, went awry as it secured only 11 votes in the election despite two BJP and one TDP rebel MLA voting for TRS.
This exposed the cracks in TRS and raised suspicion that three of its MLAs had ditched the party.
Ever since, TRS came under severe pressure not only from within but also other pro-Telangana groups to take stern action against the “traitors.”
Rao convened an emergency meeting of the party politburo at his residence this evening to discuss the issue.
Ravinder Reddy walked out of the meeting in a huff and announced he was resigning. “It is now for the party president to take a decision,” he said.
–PTI