In a setback to the ruling Congress, the Telangana High Court on Monday directed the Speaker of the State Legislative Assembly to take a decision on the disqualification petitions submitted to him by BRS and BJP legislators against defections of three BRS MLAs to Congress within four weeks.

The Speaker had been sitting on the defection petitions against dissident MLAs, Danam Nagender, Kadiyam Srihari and Venkata Rao Tellam submitted to him prompting the BRS to seek intervention of the High Court on the issue. In case the Speaker does not take a decision within the four weeks the case will reopen suo moto.

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The bench of Justice B Vijayasen Reddy directed the secretary to place all three petitions seeking the disqualifications before the Speaker for fixing the schedule while directing him to decide on the pleas in the next four weeks.

The court indicated that in case the Speaker failed to decide within four weeks the case would be opened suo moto and appropriate orders will be passed. The secretary would also file a status report on the schedule of the Speaker before the Registrar judicial of the High Court within four weeks.

The two BRS MLAs Kuna Pandu Vivekananda and Padi Kaushik Reddy as well as BJP MLA Alleti Maheshwar Reddy had petitioned to the court over the lack of action by the Speaker over the disqualification petitions submitted by them.

Among the three BRS turned Congress MLAs Danam Nagender had even fought Lok Sabha election on Congress ticket. The Congress had tried to engineer more defections within the BRS to ensure it has at least two thirds of the BRS MLAs in order to split the BRS Legislative party and then merge it with the Congress Legislative party.

Hence, in the meantime the number of defecting MLAs increased to ten with more BRS MLAs like Arekapudi Gandhi, B Krishna Mohan Rao, G Mahipal Reddy, Kale Yadaiah, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, SanjayKumar and T Prakash Goud joining the Congress. At least 26 BRS legislators will have to switch parties to engineer the split in BRS.

In a statement BRS working president KT Rama Rao said the verdict was a “slap” on the face of Congress party which had encouraged defections in the BRS. “Bye elections were inevitable in these constituencies where the sitting MLAs have defected to another party. We have been saying this from the beginning,” said Rao while criticising Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi for adopting chameleon like tactics on the issue of defections.