Telangana Speaker to hear tomorrow disqualification petition against MLA Kadiyam Srihari

Hyderabad: Telangana Assembly Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar will hear the petition for the disqualification of MLA Kadiyam Srihari on Wednesday (February 4).

The Speaker has asked Kadiyam Srihari and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA and petitioner K.P. Vivekanand to appear for the hearing.

The Speaker, who is the chairman of the tribunal under the 10th Schedule of the Constitution of India, will record the evidence on behalf of the petitioner.

Srihari, a former deputy chief minister, is one of the 10 BRS MLAs who allegedly switched loyalties to the ruling Congress party in 2024.

The Speaker last year already completed hearing on disqualification petitions against eight MLAs and pronounced orders in respect of seven MLAs.

The Speaker has dismissed the petitions and ruled that the petitioners failed to provide evidence that the MLAs defected to the Congress. He said all the MLAs are technically still in the BRS.

The Speaker is yet to pronounce the order on the plea for the disqualification of MLA Sanjay Kumar.

The hearing on the disqualification of two other MLAs, Danam Nagender and Kadiyam Srihari, could not be taken up as they had not submitted their replies to the notices served on them.

The Speaker began hearing the disqualification petitions against MLA Danam Nagender on January 30, but had to adjourn the same to February 18 on a request by BJP floor leader A. Maheshwar Reddy, who is one of the petitioners.

Maheshwar Reddy sought more time to present his arguments in the case and requested the Speaker to schedule the hearing after the municipal elections.

BRS MLA and petitioner Padi Kaushik Reddy’s advocate submitted an affidavit to the Speaker, seeking Nagender’s disqualification. He argued that Nagender, after being elected to the Assembly on the BRS ticket, not only joined the Congress party but also contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Secunderabad on a Congress ticket.

Nagender, who submitted a counter-affidavit to the Speaker, argued that the complainants relied solely on media reports and urged him to dismiss the petitions. Nagender, who was elected as BRS candidate from Khairatabad constituency in Hyderabad in 2023, said he attended a meeting of the Congress party in March 2024 in his personal capacity.

The Speaker took up a hearing on Nagender’s petition following a recent directive from the Supreme Court, which gave him two weeks to decide on the petitions for the disqualification of the remaining MLAs.

While the BRS had complained that the 10 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.