Coming down heavily on the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) for its criticism of the defections of BRS MLAs to the Congress, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy today said that the opposition party didn't have any moral right to talk about defections.
Speaking to the media in New Delhi, the CM accused BRS president and former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao of initiating the culture of defections in Telangana.
He said that KCR had started the sordid culture from the day he came to power, and continued it till the day he lost the previous Assembly elections.
"KCR took a total of 61 MLAs and MLCs belonging to other parties into the BRS when he was the Chief Minister for Telangana. Does he not remember that? He should apologise for encouraging defections," Reddy said.
Referring to the statements of BRS leaders K T Rama Rao and T Harish Rao that the Congress government would collapse within a few months, the CM said that the BRS president had indeed tried to topple the Congress government, and that the BJP had also extended its support to KCR.
The CM also said that the Congress would use the experience of MLC Jeevan Reddy, and that no one could doubt the latter's commitment to the party.
He also seemed to say that there was no hurry for a cabinet expansion. "There is a lot of publicity about the cabinet expansion. All departments have competent ministers. The education department is within my purview. So far all the examinations have been conducted effectively. We are moving ahead with a specific plan for development of Telangana," he said.
filed in:Telangana, Revanth Reddy, BRS, Party Defections, Telangana Congress