As many as 12 MLAs of the Telangana Telugu Desam Party joined the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in different phases in the first two years of Telangana formation, reducing the number of TTDP leaders to three.
Of these three, A Revanth Reddy recently joined the Congress party and even claimed to have submitted resignation from his assembly seat, but his resignation letter is yet to reach the speaker.
Similarly, none of the 12 defected TDP MLAs resigned from their seats and one of them, Talasani Srinivasa Yadav even became a minister in K Chandrasekhar Rao cabinet.
Interestingly, as per the assembly records, Revanth Reddy continues to be a TDP member notwithstanding his claim that he has resigned from the assembly and even surrendered his gunmen, quarters and vehicle.
However, the names of remaining 12 MLAs have disappeared from the TDP list and were included as part of the ruling TRS.
It does mean, speaker S Madhusudhana Chary has acknowledged these 12 defectors as being merged with the TRS. As per the anti-defection law, if one-third of the MLAs of a party join another party, it is treated as merger and as such, they can escape from disqualification.
However, the merger is acknowledged only if one-third of the MLAs of the party join another party en masse, but not one after the other over a period of time.
As such, the assembly speaker cannot treat the defection of 12 TDP MLAs to the TRS in different phases as a merger. Moreover, the powers of merger lie with the Election Commission and not the assembly speaker.
Ironically, as many as nine Congress MLAs also joined the TRS over a period of time. Though they, too, constitute more than one-third of the total Congress strength in the assembly, they are not being shown as part of the TRS, but are still treated as the Congress members!
That is precisely why the remaining TDP leaders have accused the speaker of overstepping his jurisdiction. If the Speaker’s decision is final, then the defected TDP MLAs have escaped anti-defection law completely!
