It is more than two years since the Munugode MLA Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy announced that he would join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but his recent ‘secret’ meeting with Union Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi yet again raked up his exit from the Congress.
Mr. Reddy, who was expecting to be made Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader, in 2019 expressed his desire to leave the party then and even termed it a ‘dying party.’ The appointment of A. Revanth Reddy as president of the Telangana Congress further infuriated him as he was also a front-runner for the post along with his brother and Bhongir MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy.
He then described the appointment as the end of the Congress in Telangana and claimed that only the BJP would be able to take on the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). Since then he has been dillydallying on leaving the Congress but never took the daring step, apparently fearing disqualification.
A senior leader said he was expecting the party to suspend him to escape disqualification as an MLA but the party just ignored it as it had already lost several MLAs to defection to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
Sources said Mr. Rajagopal Reddy still seemed to be in confusion as he termed his meeting with Amit Shah a courtesy call without anything to do with politics. A senior Congress leader from Nalgonda said that Mr. Reddy was unable to take the final decision of joining the BJP and losing his seat due to anti-defection law as he fears that re-election on the BJP ticket would be quite difficult.
He is aware that BJP is not a force to reckon with in the erstwhile Nalgonda district, which has been the bastion of Congress for long with sizeable influence of left parties. While the TRS made inroads into it in the last Assembly elections, the BJP presence is minimal in the district.
