Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy claimed that the Congress MLAs had never attacked Council Chairman Swamy Goud, and that the latter was faking his injury at the instance of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao.
Speaking to media persons at the Assembly Media Point on Tuesday, Reddy strongly condemned the expulsion of MLAs Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and S A Sampath Kumar, and also the suspension of 11 other Congress MLAs including him, for the rest of the session.
He said that Speaker S Madhusudhana Chary had suspended the Congress MLAs for
an incident that did not occur at all.
He said that some news channels were repeatedly showing the footage of Komatireddy throwing a headphone. However, the headphone was not thrown in the direction of the podium, and Swamy Goud was not sitting anywhere close to the point where headphone apparently ended up, he claimed. Reddy said that it was impossible that the headphone had changed its direction mid-air like a missile and hit the right eye of Goud.
Stating that there were many cameras covering the incident, he asked why no footage of the headphone actually hitting Swamy Goud was being shown, and demanded that the entire footage of the incident that occurred in the Assembly during the address of Governor E S L Narasimhan to a joint session of the Telangana legislature be made public.
He said that the Governor's speech continued for about 10-15 minutes after the incident during which Swamy Goud looked completely normal. Further, Goud, along with others, had also walked up to the Governor's car to give him a ceremonial sendoff. But a few minutes later the enactment of the drama began with Goud being shifted to a hospital on a wheelchair. He pointed out that Goud himself
had told media persons that the Chief Minister had asked him to get admitted in a hospital.
The TPCC chief alleged the entire drama was scripted by KCR who wanted to prevent the main opposition from participating in discussions on the TRS government's last budget. He said that during the Governor's address Congress members were thrown out of Assembly using marshals. He said that the Speaker did not allow Congress MLAs to explain their version and took a unilateral decision to expel two members and suspend all others for rest of the budget session.
He called the expulsion and suspensions a blot on democracy.