Hyderabad, Dec 17 (IANS) Telangana Assembly Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar will pronounce orders later on Wednesday on the petitions for the disqualification of five out of 10 BRS MLAs who allegedly shifted loyalties to the ruling Congress.

The Speaker will pronounce the orders in the open court at 3.30 p.m. on the disqualification of Tellam Venkat Rao, Bandla Krishna Mohan Reddy, T. Prakash Goud, Gudem Mahipal Reddy, and Arekapudi Gandhi.

He had already completed the hearing on the petitions for the disqualification of eight MLAs who allegedly defected from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) to the ruling party.

Kale Yadaiah, Sanjay Kumar and Pocharam Srinivas Reddy are the other MLAs whose disqualification petitions were already heard by the Speaker, who reserved orders on all the petitions.

Two other MLAs, Danam Nagender and Kadiyam Srihari, had sought more time to respond to the notice sent by the Speaker last month.

This was the third time the two MLAs were issued notices after they failed to respond to earlier notices.

The BRS had filed petitions for the disqualification of 10 MLAs who were elected to the Assembly on the BRS ticket in the 2023 elections but switched loyalties to Congress in 2024.

While the BRS complained that these MLAs openly joined the Congress and even sat in the treasury benches in the Assembly, the MLAs denied that they joined the ruling party. They contended that they only met Chief Minister Revanth Reddy to seek funds for the development of their constituencies.

The BRS brought to the notice of the Speaker that Nagender not only joined the Congress but also contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Secunderabad on a Congress ticket. It also alleged that Srihari openly campaigned for his daughter Kadiyam Kaviya, who contested the Lok Sabha polls from the Warangal constituency as the Congress candidate.

The Supreme Court, on November 17, issued a contempt notice to the Telangana Speaker for not complying with its directive to decide on disqualification pleas against the 10 MLAs.

On July 31, a bench headed by the then Chief Justice B.R. Gavai had directed the Assembly Speaker to decide in three months the matter of the disqualification of the 10 MLAs.

The bench termed the non-compliance of its earlier directions as the grossest kind of contempt while issuing notices to the Speaker and others on the pleas filed by the BRS leaders.

–IANS

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