Telangana Congress Strategy To Fight Defections

Hyderabad: With a number of the Telangana Congress MLAs moving to the ruling TRS, the party is putting all its efforts to retain the position of major Opposition party in the state.

The Congress has already lost 10 of its 19 MLAs who moved to the ruling Telugu Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

As a precautionary measure, the party says it would consider taking affidavits from candidates in the local body elections to not leave the party after winning the polls from the party ticket. The party says that B-Forms will be given to only those candidates who will submit an affidavit declaring the same.

Speaking on the issue, senior Congress leader Gudur Narayan Reddy told a TV channel that the leaders are answerable to the people who chose the candidate based on an ideology. If they switch the parties after winning from the party, it is more like cheating the people who voted for them, more than the party, he said.

Party working president Ponnam Prabhakar says that the candidates who wish to contest will have to give a declaration that they will not defect in case of wins in the next Zilla and Mandal constituency polls.

There is an election fervour in the state of Telangana. The state is gearing for the Mandal Parishad and Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies polls, next month, which comes after the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

The notifications for 5,817 MPTC (Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies polls) posts and 583 ZPTC (Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies polls) posts are likely to be issued sometime on Saturday by the Telangana State Election Commission.

The upcoming polls, which are set to be held in three phases, are the fourth round of polls in Telangana, in a span of a year.

Also Read: Telangana Congress Could Lose Opposition Status Over Mass Exodus