Hyderabad: Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, BRS MLA Danam Nagendra joined the Congress on Sunday. Danam Nagendra is the first BRS MLA to join the Congress party after it came to power in the state.
It’s a homecoming for Danam Nagender. He was a minister in the Congress government in united Andhra Pradesh from 2009 to 2014. Joined TRS (now BRS) in the year 2018 and became MLA from Khairatabad. He once again retained his seat in the assembly elections held last year. Chevella MP Ranjith Reddy and Nagendra, who was recently elected to the Assembly from Hyderabad’s Khairatabad constituency, met Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and joined the Congress party in the presence of AICC in-charge for Telangana Deepa Dasmunshi.
Both BRS leaders have joined the Congress on the day the party completed 100 days in power. BRS, which lost power to Congress after ruling the state for 10 years, had won 39 seats in the 119-member assembly.
Ranjith Reddy was “unhappy” with the party leadership after not getting re-nomination from the Chevella seat. In his resignation letter addressed to BRS President K. Chandrasekhar Rao, he wrote that due to the prevailing political circumstances in the state, he had to take the difficult decision of adopting an alternative path.
BRS has already declared Kasani Dnyaneshwar Mudiraj as its candidate for Chevella, a constituency comprising assembly constituencies around Hyderabad. He had resigned from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to join BRS ahead of the assembly elections in November last year. The Congress party had approved the name of Patnam Sunita Reddy, wife of former minister Patnam Mahender Reddy, from Chevella, but her candidature was stopped at the last moment.
Vikarabad Zilla Parishad chairperson Sunita Reddy had resigned from BRS in February and joined the Congress. Ranjith Reddy is the fifth sitting BRS MP to switch allegiance to Congress or BJP in the last one month.
He is the second BRS MP to leave the party and join the ruling party in as many days. On Saturday, Warangal MP Pasunuri Dayakar resigned from BRS and joined Congress. He was also not given a ticket.
