Congress Suffers Major Setback In Telangana As 12 Of 18 Party MLAs Meet Assembly Speaker Demanding Merger With TRS

In another embarrassing development for the Congress after its rout in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, 12 of the party’s 18 MLAs in the Telangana Legislative Assembly have held a meeting with the speaker of the house, Pocharam Srinivas, seeking for their faction to be merged with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), reports India Today.

As per existing rules, a minimum of 2/3rds of a party’s lawmakers are required for any merger to take place, and the Congress MLAs in Telangana seem to meet this criteria.

Already, three of four Congress members of the legislative council (MLC) have entered the ranks of the TRS, which is the ruling party in the state.

Although the previous number of Congress MLAs was 19, the number has now gone down to 18 with the resignation of the party’s state unit president N Uttam Kumar Reddy, paving the way for a merger.

For their part, the Congress leadership claims that monetary incentives are behind the willingness of so many of its MLAs to join TRS in the state.

The Congress party had also suffered a major defeat in the Assembly polls for the state in December 2018.