TRS MLAs resign for MLC debacle

>The fall out of the cross voting during the elections held for the Legislative Council on Thursday has left the Telangana Rashtra Samithi resembling a house in disarray. Three of the party MLAs, E Ravinder Reddy, Vidyasagar Rao and Kaveti Sammaiah on Saturday are reported to have resigned from the elected posts after being eyed with suspicion that they were the ones who had defied the party Whip and indulged in voting against the TRS official candidate Mohd Mahmood Ali.

>According to highly placed sources, two of the three MLAs, Mr Ravinder Reddy and Mr Vidyasagar Rao handed over their resignations directly to TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao, while Mr Sammaiah faxed in his papers since he is in Kagaznagar. The sources said that the MLAs lamented that they were projected as the ‘villians’ in the whole episode by the media and denied indulging in cross voting.

>The MLAs reportedly asked KCR to conduct an inquiry and accept their resignation letters if they were indeed found to be guilty of defying the party Whip. Earlier in the day, Mr Ravinder Reddy and Mr Vidyasagar Rao had walked out of a politburo meeting of the party which was being held at KCR’s residence.

>According to sources, the MLAs were peeved at being looked on with suspicion by the other members of the party politburo during the meeting. Their anger burst over when some of the politburo members reportedly asked them point blank if they were indeed the ones who had cross-voted.