Mohammed Ali Shabbir slammed BRS, BJP on SCCL privatisation move
Senior Congress leader Mohammed Ali Shabbir launched a scathing attack on the BRS for its stance on defections and accused BRS President K. Chandrasekhar Rao of initiating the culture of defection in the state.
Addressing a press conference at the Gandhi Bhavan here on Monday, Shabbir Ali who is an Advisor to the Telangana Government (SC, ST, BC & Minorities), said that KCR started the culture of defection from the day he came to power in 2014 and continued it till he lost the 2023 Assembly elections.
Citing examples, he said that on June 2, 2014, on the day Telangana was officially formed, two BSP MLAs, Indrakaran Reddy and Koneru Konappa, defected to the BRS.
On December 16, 2014, Talasani Srinivas Yadav, a TDP MLA, was appointed Minister. As per rules, Talasani should have resigned within six months and faced by-elections, but he continued in his post without doing so, Shabbir said.
KCR subsequently facilitated the defection of 11 TDP MLAs culminating in the formal merger of the TDP with the BRS on March 11, 2016.
Talasani remained a TDP MLA and a TRS Minister for 14 months and 24 days, said Shabbir highlighting it as a breach of democratic principles.
During KCR’s first term (2014-2018), the BRS accepted the defection of four MPs, 25 MLAs and 18 MLCs, that is, 47 defections.
During its second term (2018-2023), another 14 MLAs, including 12 from the Congress and two from the TDP, defected to the BRS, he said.
Shabbir asserted that in the last decade, KCR orchestrated the defection of 59 elected representatives, fundamentally altering the political landscape of Telangana. He accused KCR of systematically undermining democracy in Telangana by decimating the opposition.
He pointed to the period between March 2, 2020, and June 6, 2020, when KCR engineered the defection of 12 Congress MLAs, effectively stripping Dalit leader Bhatti Vikramarka of his Leader of the Opposition status.
Similarly, he accused KCR of inducing Congress MLCs to defect to the BRS to prevent him, a Muslim, from taking over as the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council, despite having only one month remaining in his term.
He condemned the BRS for criticising the Congress, citing anti-defection laws and morals and labelling it as hypocrisy.
He recalled that when Congress and TDP MLAs joined BRS, KCR justified it by claiming they were joining the ruling party to develop their constituencies and Telangana. However, now when BRS members are joining the Congress, the same logic is not being applied.
He claimed that around 30 of the 39 BRS MLAs are ready to switch to the Congress which might then lose its status as the main opposition party. He said that except for KCR’s family members, no one would remain in the BRS.
Shabbir raised serious concerns about the allocation of prime land for BRS offices. He said that the KCR government had allotted 11 acres of prime land worth Rs 1,100 crore in Kokapet for just Rs 37 crore to construct the BRS office.
He also pointed out that similar prime plots were allotted to construct BRS offices in district headquarters towns. He demanded that the Congress government cancel those allocations and reclaim the lands.
He said the Kokapet land given to the BRS should be auctioned, and its proceeds should be utilised for crop loan waiver and Rythu Bharosa schemes.
He said that in the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BRS did not win a single seat. It lost deposits in eight out of 17 seats and got only 16.68% votes, while it got 37.3% votes in Assembly elections.
This drastic fall in voting percentage is proof that the BRS is almost finished in Telangana. Why do such a small party need so much land, he said and added that the BRS already had an office in Banjara Hills.
Shabbir also accused the BRS admin of gross mismanagement of the SCCL, resulting in a decrease in its workforce. This mismanagement, he highlighted, led to a reduction of 22,000 workers in the company after the formation of Telangana.
He criticised the BRS government for failing to fulfil the promise of regularising over 25,000 contract workers in SCCL and accused KCR of taking a U-turn on open-cast mining.
Despite promising to ban open cast mining during elections, KCR approved around 16 open cast mines after coming to power in June 2014. He also noted the BRS government’s failure to construct permanent houses for SCCL workers.
He also accused the BJP of attempting to privatise SCCL, with the auction of coal mines being the first step, while the BRS remained a mute spectator for 10 years as the BJP government systematically ‘damaged’ the SCCL.
