Several BRS leaders, including former finance minister T Harish Rao, were placed under house arrest by the Telangana Police on Friday after the party convened a meeting at the residence of dissident party MLA Arekapudi Gandhi, who has been at the centre of a controversy following his appointment as the Public Accounts Committee chairman in the Legislative Assembly.

Usually, the post of PAC chairman goes to the principal Opposition party but the Congress government chose Gandhi who recently defected from the BRS to join Congress to circumvent the customary appointment. Yesterday, Gandhi asserted that he was still in the BRS, but when challenged by another BRS MLA Padi Kaushik Reddy, his supporters attacked the latter’s residence with eggs and tomatoes.

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Facing flak for their failure to stop the attack on Kaushik Reddy’s residence leading to the escalation of political tension between the two parties, the police swiftly came into action and placed several BRS leaders under house arrest in the wee hours. Among the BRS leaders, who were not allowed to come out of their houses, are P Sabitha Indra Reddy, T Srinivas Yadav, KP Vivekanand, RS Praveen, Padi Kaushik Reddy, and Shambipur Raju.

Harish Rao was initially not allowed to go to the hospital for treatment of his shoulder injury when the police picked him up from the office of the Cyberabad commissioner of police yesterday. Taking to X, he wrote “Is this public governance? Is this the rule of Indiramma? Shame, you are murdering democracy, Revanth Reddy. It is evil to arrest and terrorize the aggrieved party, leaving the attackers alone.”

The BRS also protested when another dissident MLA Danam Nagender met Arekapudi Gandhi at the latter’s residence but those who had come to meet Harish Rao were detained by the police. There was also heavy police presence outside the residence of Arekapudi Gandhi in view of the meeting convened by the BRS there.

While the BRS, armed with a high court order, wants to force bye-elections in the constituencies where ten of its MLAs have defected to the ruling party, Congress is looking for legal routes to avoid bypolls. The Congress party will need at least another 16 MLAs to ensure a split in the BRS legislative party so that it can engineer a merger of the splinter group with the Congress Legislative party.

Meanwhile, DGP Dr Jitendra directed the commissioners of Hyderabad, Cyberabad, and Rachakonda to maintain zero tolerance towards those out to disturb the law and order situation in the state capital.