Congress senior leader and Advisor to the Telangana Government Mohammed Ali Shabbir has ridiculed BRS leaders’ stance regarding the return of Khairtabad MLA Danam Nagender to the Congress fold.
In a media statement on Tuesday, Shabbir Ali stated that former Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao could be crowned as the mastermind behind engineering defections in opposition parties. He reminded that KCR initiated the culture of defection shortly after assuming power in June 2014. Between 2014 and 2018, KCR engineered the defection of 4 MPs, 25 MLAs, and 18 MLCs.
Furthermore, in his second term, he engineered the defection of 14 MLAs, including 12 from the Congress party. BRS also made thousands of Sarpanches, ZPTC, MPTC, Councillors, Corporators and other leaders defect to BRS from the then opposition parties.
Shabbir Ali pointed out that the BRS party survived and thrived solely on the basis of defections. “KCR decimated the entire opposition. He could not tolerate any opposition presence in the State.
Between March 2 and June 6, 2020, he engineered the defection of 12 Congress MLAs to deprive Dalit leader Bhatti Vikramarka of Leader of Opposition status. Similarly, he induced Congress MLCs to defect to BRS to prevent me, a Muslim leader, from assuming the position of Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council, despite only one month remaining in my term,” he said.
