Ending his 19-year-long association with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), former Minister and Huzurabad MLA Eatala Rajender announced his resignation from the party and also the State Legislature.
He is planning to submit his resignation personally to Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy in a day or two. He will pay his respects at the Martyrs’ Memorial before meeting the Speaker.
Mr. Rajender held a press conference to announce his resignation on Friday morning and lashed out at Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao over his ‘dictatorial’ style of functioning and said no minister could work independently under him.
“I could not work as a slave under him and that is why I am resigning from the party,” he said.
Questioning the suppression of voices in Telangana, he asked whether Telangana would have been a reality if the governments in the combined Andhra Pradesh behaved similarly.
“You don’t want unions now but remember how you took the help of those same unions in the Telangana agitation,” he said, recalling how employees of TSRTC were terrorised to leave the unions.
Terming Pragathi Bhavan (the CM’s official residence) as ‘Slave Bhavan’, he said even Ministers were insulted and denied entry at the gate itself.
“I, along with some Ministers, went to meet the CM but were turned away thrice from the gate itself,” he said, adding: “I advised them to change the name of Pragathi Bhavan to Slave Bhavan, unable to bear the insult.’
Mr. Rajender claimed that even Finance Minister T. Harish Rao, the Chief Minister’s nephew, had to face humiliation and said the CM’s attitude reflected a dictator’s mindset.
He said the CM had promoted defections from Opposition parties, despite enjoying majority, with the sole intention of silencing the Opposition’s voice on behalf of the people. “Perhaps, KCR would be thinking ‘why should there be Constitution at all and elections were held, as I can rule the state myself alone’.”
Rejecting the charges of the TRS that he won on the party ticket and with Mr. Chandrashekhar Rao’s picture in the campaign, he said if that was true even Mr. Rao’s daughter Kalvakuntla Kavitha too contested on the party ticket and lost.
Mr. Rajender said the CM, who banked on people’s voice and unions during the agitation and elections during the agitation, was now totally dependent on money and conspiracies to win the elections. Everyone knew how the recent Graduate MLC elections and by-polls were won in the State, he added.
