According to media reports, 4 Congress MLCs of Telangana state assembly on Friday requested the Chairman of Legislative council of the state, K Swamy Goud, to merge their party in the upper house with the ruling party Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). It comes as a major setback for the Congress party after the historic drubbing of the grand alliance Mahakutami in the assembly elections of Telangana.
Congress party has only 6 MLAs in the state assembly of Telangana. Out of which 4 MLAs including the senior most MLC K Damodar Reddy along with three other Congress MLCs M Prabhakar Rao, T Santosh Kumar and A Lalitha, submitted a letter requesting the merger of the Congress Legislative Council party with the TRS. The letter was submitted after a meeting of Congress Legislature Party was held on December 20.
“In the said meeting, we the undersigned have decided and agreed to merge into Telangana Rashtra Samithi Legislature Party in Telangana Legislative Council,” the letter read.
“There are six members of Congress party in all in the Telangana Legislative Council,” the rebel MLCs said. Pointing to the fact that they have the strength of two-third of the total number (i.e. four) required for the merger as per para 4 of Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. “We therefore, request you to accept our merger into Telangana Rashtra Samithi Legislature Party in Telangana Legislative Council with immediate effect and our names may be shown in the list of Telangana Rashtra Samithi Legislature Party in Telangana Legislative Council,” they said in the letter.
The para 4 of Tenth Schedule of the Constitution says, “At least two-third members of a legislature party are required to split it without attracting the provisions of the anti-defection law”. K Damodar Reddy further claimed that they had the required strength for the merger under para 4 of Tenth Schedule of the Constitution and urged the chairman to accept it with immediate effect.
While PM Modi’s vision of ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ suffered a setback in the Hindi heartland, it has gone one step closer to being a ground reality in Southern part of India. The rebel leaders have made one of a kind request where MLAs of a national party have urged to merge the party with a regional party. The defections from Congress signify the all around defeat of the unlikely and unfeasible Mahakutami alliance.
The shameful defeat of the so-called coalition ‘Mahakutami’ will affect other prospective alliances of the Congress party. The grand-old party is trying to come up with another grand alliance, “Mahagathbandhan” before the Lok Sabha election of 2019 at the center. Not to forget the fact that the alliance with Congress party has never benefited other parties. The bitter fallout of the alliance of the Samajwadi party and the congress after the assembly elections of Uttar Pradesh is a proof of it. The Gandhi-Yadav duo joined hands with visionary slogans like ‘cycle ko haath pasand hai, UP ko ye saath pasand hai’, but later Akhilesh Yadav dumped Rahul Gandhi when ‘cycle’ and ‘haath’ together closed just 54 out of 403 seats in the assembly election of UP.
The turns of events clearly prove the point that people as well as party leaders have realized the futility and opportunism of TDP-Congress alliance. The alliance which had been dubbed as “Mahakutami” was an opportunistic one and went down as a disaster of epic proportions.
