Hyderabad: In his first response to the suspension of his sister and Telangana Jagruthi chief K Kavitha from the party, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president K T Rama Rao (KTR) said he has no comments.
“Whatever had to be discussed has been discussed….Action has been taken. Once action has been taken, there is nothing further I can add, comment or elaborate,” the senior BRS member said in a press conference at Telangana Bhavan on Monday, September 8.
Kavitha, daughter of party founder and former Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), was suspended from the party on September 2 over “anti-party activities.” The move came after her powerful accusation alleging her cousin and former irrigation minister T Harish Rao of orchestrating a plot to ‘frame’ her father in the PC Ghose commission of inquiry on the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation project.
She also named party leader and former Rajya Sabha MP J Santosh Kumar and Megha Engineering and Infrastructure MD Krishna Reddy, for playing important roles in the alleged irregularities and putting the blame on the BRS supremo.
The following day, she announced her resignation from both the primary membership of the party and her position as MLC.
The events overturned BRS’s political crisis, with many reports alleging cracks in the party for quite some time. Videos of BRS workers burning her poster and shouting “Kavitha down down!” and “Jai Telangana,” emerged. In response, Telangana Jagruthi workers burn Harish Rao’s effigy outside their Banjara Hills office, retaliating against BRS workers who torched their leader’s poster in Siddipet, Rao’s constituency.
Speaking to the press, BRS Siddipet MLA T Harish Rao said he would leave the allegations made against him by his cousin and former party leader K Kavitha to her wisdom.
“My 25-year-long political journey is like an open book before the Telangana people. She made the same comments which some political parties have been making against me for some time now. Why did she make those allegations? I leave it to her wisdom,” said Harish Rao, nephew of BRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR).
BRS to abstain from Vice Presidential election
KTR further said that his party would abstain from the Vice Presidential election on September 9 as an expression of “anguish” of Telangana’s farmers over the shortage of urea in the state.
Both the Congress and BJP have “failed” to address the shortage issue, he alleged.
The shortage is such that scuffles are taking place among farmers while waiting in queues for urea, the BRS leader said. “We are abstaining. We are not going to participate,” he told reporters.
The BRS could have exercised the option of NOTA had it been available in the Vice Presidential election, he said.
