In a major setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the upcoming elections in Telangana, former MLA Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy has decided to part ways with the party and asserted that he is witnessing a notable shift in Telangana’s political landscape. He also said that he decided to rejoin the Congress party.
He asserted that the BRS is destined to face defeat in the forthcoming assembly elections, with the grand old party emerging victorious as the people of the state are with Telangana.
“Yes, I have taken the decision to join Congress again. I was an earlier Congress party MLA from Munugode, and I have observed that in this election, the mood of the people of Telangana is towards the grand old party. The political equations in Telangana have changed. This time, Congress will defeat KCR. This is one of the big reasons that I decided to join the party back,” he said while speaking to ANI.
Komatireddy’s statement comes shortly after his name was conspicuously absent from the BJP’s initial list of candidates. Earlier, Komatireddy tweeted that “activists are my strength, fans are my breath and their aspirations are my ambition. Positions are not new to me. My decision is for people. Hoping that my decision to join Congress will be blessed by all my workers and fans.”
Rajagopal Reddy had won Munugode in 2018 on a Congress ticket. Later in 2022, he quit Congress and resigned as MLA only to join the BJP. He contested the Munugode bypoll on a BJP ticket. However, he lost to BRS candidate K Prabhakar Reddy in a high-stake poll battle with a margin of 10,309 votes. Reddy was not seen in any BJP activities for quite sometime.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on October 9 announced that the Telangana Assembly polls are scheduled to be held on November 30. The counting of votes will be done on December 3. Telangana is set to witness a triangular contest between the BJP, the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi, and the Congress in the upcoming assembly election.
In the previous Assembly election held in 2018, BRS managed to win 88 seats out of 119 and had a dominant vote share of 47.4 per cent. Congress came in a distant second with 19 seats. Its vote share was 28.7 per cent.
