All India Congress Committee general secretary in-charge of Telangana affairs, Digvijaya Singh, said the party leaders would step out of Gandhi Bhavan and go to people to expose the ‘undemocratic practices’ of the TRS and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in encouraging defections of leaders from other political parties.
Simultaneously, the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) would also move courts and seek justice on this count, he said, speaking to media persons after presiding over a Coordination Committee meeting at Gandhi Bhavan, the party headquarters here on Wednesday. He charged Mr. Rao of being openly involved in the ‘business of trading MLAs and MLCs by enticing them with contracts and the like’. Mr. Singh said it was time the Anti-Defection Law was amended to plug the loopholes that certain political parties were taking advantage of. For example, he said a re-think was the need of the hour by the Government of India and political parties on fixing a timeframe for the Speaker before the matter goes to court. “We will explore all options available to us in democracy,” he said. The TPCC would conduct public meetings at Miryalguda and Ramagundam to tell people of how they were being cheated. “We will conduct such meetings in every constituency from where the concerned people’s representative has defected to the TRS,” he stated.
Asked about land acquisition, the senior Congress leader said that the government was cheating the poor and grabbing their land in the name of projects. “The provisions that we in the United Progressive Alliance incorporated in the Act of 2013 are being sought to be amended, against the interests of the poor,” he said, adding that the TRS government was following in the Centre’s footsteps in this regard.
Earlier, TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy alleged that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao was “killing democracy by encouraging defections” and said it amounted to political degradation of the worst order. By the end of June, he said new mandal and district-level committees would be constituted and by the end of July, village-level committees would be up and running. By August, the same would be in place at the polling booth-level. Among others who attended the meeting were AICC secretary R.C. Kuntia, chairman of the AICC SC Cell K. Raju, Leaders of Opposition Mohd Ali Shabbir (Legislative Council) and K. Jana Reddy (Assembly) and working president Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka.
