It looks like Bharatiya Janata Party legislator from Dubbak M Raghunandan Rao is preparing ground to defect to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi led by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao sooner or later.
Raghunandan Rao, who had a meeting with party top leaders in New Delhi, said he had put forth three demands before the party – to make him the Telangana BJP chief, or the BJP floor leader or the BJP national spokesperson post.
“I have been working for the party for the last 10 years. Why should I not become the party president? Maybe, because of my caste, I am not being considered for the post,” he said.
But, sources said, there was no positive response from the BJP high command to his demands. They chose to ignore him and asked him to work for the party sincerely, before seeking posts and positions.
A disgruntled Rao said the condition of the BJP in Telangana would be known in the next couple of months.
“The party national leadership is in such dire straits that it doesn’t even know that there is no floor leader for the party in the assembly,” he said.
Stating that he had won Dubbak by-election not because of the party but because of his own credibility, the BJP MLA said the people had not voted for him by seeing the posters of Tarun Chugh or Bandi Sanjay or Sunil Bansal.
“Even Amit Shah didn’t come to Dubbak to campaign for me. Nobody helped me win the seat. In Munugode, the BJP had spent over Rs 100 crore. Had I been given the same money in Dubbak, I would have conquered the entire Telangana,” he said.
He asserted that he would once again win from Dubbak for the second term, irrespective of the party. He reminded that in the earlier elections, the BJP did not get even 3,500 votes in Dubbak.
Rao also lashed out at BJP state president Bandi Sanjay, stating that the latter had made big money after becoming the party president.
“He had contested the earlier elections by mortgaging his wife’s mangalasutra. Now, he has risen to the level of spending lakhs of rupees on advertisements,” he pointed out.
