HYDERABAD: The BJP that was on a high with the recent prized catch of Dr Boora Narasaiah Goud from the TRS, received payback from the ruling party, which did one better by having two BJP leaders – K Swamy Goud, and Dr Sravan Dasoju — join its fold, resulting in some high-pressure moments for the saffron party.
To make matters worse for the BJP, as soon as news broke that Goud and Dr Sravan were joining the TRS, a flood of tidbits of information began making the rounds on social media platforms that there were more leaders set to desert the BJP – including former TRS MLA from Nizamabad, Enugu Ravinder Reddy who joined the BJP in July, and Ch Vittal, the former president of Telangana State Employees Union, who joined the party last December, not to mention the names of the likes of Dubbak MLA M. Raghunandan Rao.
This sent BJP leaders scrambling to figure out where more hits from the TRS wold come though, by the end of the day, BJP leaders appeared to have somewhat calmed down.
At one point of time in the day, the name of former party MP A.P. Jithender Reddy too made the rounds as a potential BJP deserter. However, he told Deccan Chronicle that there was no question of going to a party that has lost its moorings. “The TRS is trying to spread confusion,” he said.
Several senior BJP leaders said that they did not see Swamy Goud and Dr Sravan’s exit coming. The BJP, had been in a self-congratulatory mode ever since Dr Goud joined the party with hopes that he would be able to swing a substantial number of Backward Class votes in its favour in Munugode, coming as he does, from Bhongir constituency, which he represented in the Lok Sabha.
For the TRS, engineering the return of Goud and Sravan into its fold appears to have been not very hard, itching as it was for paying back the BJP in the same coin after it lost Dr Narasaiah Goud. It is no secret that TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao had been reaching out to leaders in the BJP seeking their ‘support’, in other words, asking them to join the ruling party, particularly in the light of the byelection in Munugode.
According to sources in the BJP, given Swamy Goud’s seniority in the TRS, and his past association with Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, his switching to the TRS could have been made possible only with Chandrashekar Rao’s involvement. But in doing so, the TRS has proved that it was not a party that will take a blow lying down and is capable of landing its own punches with enough heft on its opponents, and at a time of its choice.
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