Telangana Assembly Poll News: Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy, who has quit Congress in 2022 to join Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), has announced that he will return to Congress ahead of the crucial Telangana polls. While this comes as a setback for the BJP, it is also noteworthy that Komatireddy had unsuccessfully contested on the saffron party ticket in Munugode assembly by-poll last year.
In a post on X, Reddy said, “As per the opinion of my followers and supporters, I decided to join the Congress party hoping that I have the blessings of all my supporters.”
Komatireddy’s statement comes shortly after his name was conspicuously absent from the BJP’s initial list of candidates. 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.
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The former Congress legislator left the Congress in August last year makng headlines. He had contested in the by-poll in October, however, he lost to BRS candidate K Prabhakar Reddy by a margin of 10,309 votes.
Komatireddy has said that the reason for his constant back-and-forth between Congress and BJP is that he aims to “trounce” the K Chandrashekar Rao government in Telangana. Reddy also said that the “people’s mood is in favour of the Congress”.
A noteworthy factor in this constant alternating by Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy is that, he had enforced one of the most expensive election process in India, when he left Congress and thereby the Munogode serat vacant.
The Munugode election in November 2022 is considered to be one of the most expensive polls in the country’s history owing to the parties’ spending spree to woo voters, NDTV reports.
According to poll officers, cash worth ₹ 8 crore and 5,000 litres of liquor were seized in the run-up to the election. The bypoll was also in news for being the ‘most-watched’ election in the country — 48 CCTV cameras kept an eye on the polling process that was webcast across 298 police stations, the report adds.
Reddy’s brother Komatireddy Venkat Reddy is a Congress MP, representing Bhuvanagiri in Parliament.
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.
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Updated: 25 Oct 2023, 08:43 PM IST
