The BRS is running into one crisis after the other – from the MLA ‘poachgate’ case not going in their favour to the TSPSC paper leak – and party leaders are busy countering the opposition’s onslaught
The newly rechristened Bharat Rashtra Samithi is in the news for all the wrong reasons, with Telangana MLC K Kavitha being interrogated by the Enforcement Directorate in the alleged Delhi liquor scam. The party is running into one crisis after another in the election year: from the MLA ‘poachgate’ case not going in their favour to the TSPSC paper leak, BRS leaders are busy countering the opposition’s onslaught.
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In a meeting on Monday, BRS president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao urged members to combat the opposition’s “misinformation campaign”. After the BJP and Congress raised the issue of farmers being affected by hail storms in some parts of the state, the chief minister is set to tour the areas.
Here are four reasons the BRS is feeling the heat at the moment:
- Kavitha and ED: The MLC’s questioning by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the Delhi excise policy case has attracted attention from all over. Though her lawyer had argued that as a woman, she should be interrogated at her residence in Hyderabad and not in Delhi, the ED did not comply with that request. The Supreme Court is set to hear Kavitha’s plea on March 24, in which she has stated that a woman cannot be summoned to the ED’s office for questioning. She had said it could be either done through video conferencing or face-to-face at her own residence. Till the hearing, Kavitha has to continue to appear for the summons.
- BJP’s win in MLC election: BJP-backed candidate A Venkata Narayana Reddy won the recently held Mahbubnagar-Rangareddy-Hyderabad Teacher’s MLC election. Chenna Keshava Reddy, a PRTU candidate indirectly backed by the BRS, was eliminated after the 20th round of counting. Union minister Amit Shah had congratulated the winner in a tweet. He had said the victory showed that the people of Telangana were fed up with corruption and wanted a transparent government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
- MLA poaching case: The SC recently directed the Telangana police not to probe the MLA poaching case. The state police had appealed against the decision of the high court to hand over the case to the CBI. The state had argued that since the incident took place in Hyderabad and involved state leaders, state agencies should be able to investigate it. The matter reached the SC and, for now, it has asked both CBI or Telangana police not to carry on with the probe as the matter is sub-judice. Last November, BRS MLA Pilot Rohith Reddy had made the sensational claim that the BJP had tried to lure him into the party fold with a bribe of Rs 100 crore. Audio and video recordings of the alleged deal had cropped up on social media.
- TSPSC paper leak: A paper leak in a recruitment examination has snowballed into a major controversy and the BRS is going all out on damage control. Congress president A Revanth Reddy was served a notice by the special investigation team looking into the case when he made serious allegations against the state government. The Congress leader had said IT minister KT Rama Rao’s personal assistant was involved in the leak. He was soon served with a notice asking him to share information with the SIT. Since the exams were cancelled, all opposition parties have taken to the streets to protest.
