Rejecting the recommendations sent by the state cabinet to nominate two BRS party leaders to the legislative council under the governor’s quota, the Telangana governor, Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan, urged the chief minister, K Chandrasekhar Rao, to refrain from recommending politically aligned persons under the governor’s quota since it defeats the very objective of having nominated posts.

Rejecting the MLC nomination for Dasoju Sravan Kumar and Kurra Satyanarayana, Soundararajan wrote to the chief secretary and the chief minister that the governor was empowered to nominate members from the field of literature, science, art, cooperative movement, and social service. She wrote: “My earnest request to the cabinet and the chief minister is to avoid politically aligned persons to fill up nominated posts under Article 17(15) of the Constitution, defeating its objectives and enactment and consider only genuinely eminent persons in the respective field.”

While Dasoju Sravan Kumar belongs to the backward community K Satyanarayana belongs to the ST community, both of which the BRS is trying to woo ahead of the elections.

The BRS reacted sharply and immediately hit back at the governor taking a dig at her own appointment as governor while she was still the BJP state president of the Tamil Nadu unit. “Nominating an active BJP state president to the post of governor is also a violation of Article 17(15) Constitution,” BRS spokesperson Krishaank posted on X.

This is not the first time Soundararajan had rejected political persons recommended by the government under governor’s quota. Earlier she had rejected the recommendation of Padi Kaushik Reddy who had joined BRS from the Congress for MLC post under governor’s quota. At that time, she had cited the same reason for his rejection.

Although the state government got him elected as MLC later, it started a bitter tug-of-war between the governor and the state government. Of late, the relationship between Raj Bhavan and Pragathi Bhavan thawed, leading to Soundararajan describing the chief minister as a “strong politician”.