Cong To Approach Courts, EC, Centre Over Defections

Severely upset by the defections of its MLAs and MPs, the Congress has decided to approach the courts, the Election Commission and the Centre to stop the malady with the Anti-Defection law proving ineffective.

Speaking to the media at Gandhi Bhavan on Wednesday along with Party leaders R C Kuntia, Koppula Raju, N Uttam Kumar Reddy, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, K Jana Reddy, Mohammed Ali Shabbir and Mallu Ravi after the TPCC Coordination Committee meeting, AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh alleged that Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was the mastermind behind the continuous political defections in the State.

He alleged that KCR was giving huge contracts to the MLAs and MPs who were joining the TRS, and that the defecting MLAs and MPs were treating politics as business.

He said that the cadre was fully behind the Party, and that only the leaders were deserting it for their selfish business interests.

Singh said that the Congress alone had a bright future in Telangana as the TDP, YSR Congress Party and BJP had become completely emasculated. The Congress would stand by the people and wage war against the TRS government, especially with regard to land acquisition.

"The TRS government opened the doors for corruption by escalating project estimates two- to three-fold in irrigation. The Congress will hold meetings with the irrigation experts and question the government's escalation of the estimates. The TRS government is acting like a 'middleman' instead of behaving like a government with regard to land acquisition from the farmers," he said.

The government was also forcing the farmers to surrender their lands by issuing GO No 123, he alleged. He said that the Congress would stand by the Mallanna Sagar project victims and continue its fight till justice was done to them.

He also said the Party would talk to the leaders who were criticizing each other openly and take steps to maintain discipline.