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Updated: Jan 16, 2019 19:13 IST

Three members of the legislative council (MLCs), who defected from Telangana Rashtra Samithi to Congress before the recent assembly elections, were disqualified from their membership on Wednesday.

While Bhupathi Reddy was elected to the legislative council from Nizamabad local bodies’ constituency in 2015, Yadava Reddy was elected to the upper house by the MLAs in 2016 and Ramulu Naik was nominated under the Governor’s quota in 2014.

All the three, along with another TRS MLC Konda Murali, joined the Congress party before the December 7 assembly elections in the state without resigning from their council membership. Murali, however, resigned soon after the assembly elections, saying he did not want to continue in the post for which he was elected on TRS ticket.

In three separate bulletins, legislative council chairperson K Swamy Goud said R Bhupathi Reddy, K Yadava Reddy and S Ramulu Naik, were disqualified on the ground of defection.

The decision to disqualify the defected MLCs was taken by Goud following a petition submitted to him by TRS leaders Paturi Sudhakar Reddy and Palla Rajeshwar Reddy last month. They alleged the MLCs had shifted their loyalties only to further their self-interests.

Goud issued a show-cause notice to the defectors and after going through their written explanations, he decided to disqualify them.

Interestingly, Goud did not apply the same rule of disqualification to four Congress MLCs Akula Lalitha, Santosh Kumar, MS Prabhakar and K Damodar Reddy, who had defected to the TRS. While Damodar Reddy and Prabhakar defected to the TRS before the assembly elections, the other two jumped the fence after the TRS returned to power for a second term.

The four MLCs wrote to the council chairperson stating they had held a meeting of the Congress legislature party in the council and decided to merge it with it the TRS. Within hours, Goud issued a bulletin acknowledging the merger and declared that the defected leaders would be treated as TRS MLCs.

The Congress had seven MLCs in the 40-member legislative council till recently. One of them Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy resigned from his membership following his election to the state assembly from Munugode constituency in the recent elections.

With the “merger” of the four MLCs with the TRS, the Congress is now left with only two, Mohammad Shabbir Ali and Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy, and their term, too, will come to an end by March.

“Since the four defected Congress MLAs constituted more than one-third of the total number of Congress MLCs, they avoided disqualification and the chairman had approved the merger,” an official of the legislative council secretariat said.

With the merger of the four MLCs, the strength of the TRS in the council has gone up to 24.

The Congress party in Telangana is already in a bad shape following its debacle in the recent assembly elections. It could win only 19 seats in the 119-member assembly.

There are speculations that some of these Congress MLAs are also keen on shifting their loyalties to the TRS.s