Although the Congress has achieved a clear majority with 64 MLAs, the party is expected to follow in the footsteps of KCR and encourage defections from the BRS in the coming days.
The grand old party does not have a single MLA from the Greater Hyderabad area leaving it vulnerable in the upcoming Parliamentary elections and civic elections which will be held two years later. Engineering defections from the BRS which won 13 seats in Hyderabad and adjoining areas is the only way out for the grand old party to see through the upcoming polls.
On the day of counting, just after it was clear that the Congress was heading for a majority, two BRS MLAs established contact with the PCC chief A Revanth Reddy. Since most of the key BRS MLAs, who won in Hyderabad and adjoining areas are seasoned party hoppers and had joined the BRS either from the Congress and TDP, it would not be too much of a hardship to win them over.
The current PCC chief A Revanth Reddy himself was in the TDP and a close confidante of N Chandrababu Naidu. He was the only one who remained staunchly anti-KCR even as the rest chose to join the BRS when it became clear that TDP had no future Telangana.
While former minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav, the MLAs from Sanathnagar and Danam Nagender from Khairtabad, who had left TDP to join the TRS (BRS), would be the key leaders that the Congress would want on their side Sabitha Indra Reddy who won from Maheshwaram in Ranga Reddy had hopped from Congress after 2018 may also choose to return back.
If the Congress decides to split the BRS Legislature Party and merge it in the CLP like KCR did in 2018 it would require two-third of the 39 MLAs of BRS to agree to the merger. In that case 26 of the BRS MLA s would be required to split the party.
There are other former TDP leaders who have been elected from Greater Hyderabad including Maganti Gopinath who won in Jubilee Hills against Mohammad Azharuddin of Congress, Arekapudi Gandhi of Serilingapally which contains the IT Hub, Ch Malla Reddy from Medchal and his son-in-law Marri Rajsekhar Reddy of Malkajgiri. Former Congress turned BRS MLAs include D Sudheer Reddy from LB Nagar and B Laxma Reddy from Uppal are other key leaders.
The Congress also does not have a single minority MLA, nor does BRS after the meagre number of candidates who were given nominations lost due to the splitting of the minority vote. G Niranjan vice president of PCC has proposed that Feroze Khan, the party candidate from Nampally who lost by 2000 votes to AIMIM should be included in the new Cabinet.
3 MLAs absent from BRS meeting
The absence of three newly-elected MLAs including former minister Ch Malla Reddy at the first meeting of the BRS legislators held today at party headquarters, prompted speculation that they might join the Congress. Apart from the former minister, his son-in-law Marri Rajsekhar Reddy and D Sudheer Reddy from LB Nagar were also absent, apparently because they were not informed on time. Malla Reddy however, denied the rumours. The meeting was chaired by BRS working president KT Rama Rao.
The AICC observers including DK Shivakumar have left for New Delhi to meet Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to discuss the chief ministerial candidate.
Chief electoral officer Vikas Raj met governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan and formally submitted the notification containing the names of elected members of the Legislative Assembly and completion of election process. Consequent to the resolution adopted by the Council of ministers the governor also dissolved the second Legislative Assembly with effect from the afternoon of 3 December. Following the defeat of the BRS many retired police officers and bureaucrats who were appointed as advisors by the chief minister quit their posts.