Telangana | BRS, BJP engage in war of words after latter's poaching jibe
Union Minister G Kishan Reddy posted an old picture of 12 Congress MLAs joining BRS and a recent one of BRS MLAs joining Congress
Union Coal Minister and Telangana BJP chief G Kishan Reddy’s bid to take a jibe at Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi over the defections of BRS MLAs in the state elicited a stinging response from the BRS on Wednesday.
It was a post on Kishan Reddy’s official X handle that triggered a war of words between the two parties. Titled ‘Presenting you the MLA Poach Story of Telangana’, the Union minister’s post said the Congress was earlier the “seller” and the BRS the “buyer” but now there has been a role reversal of sorts. He also posted an old picture of 12 Congress MLAs joining BRS and a recent one of BRS MLAs joining the Congress.
He also addressed Rahul Gandhi in the post, saying “Mr Rahul Gandhi, your promises can’t gloss over this blatant political opportunism! The people of Bharat are watching.”
However, his post didn’t go down well with the BRS which hit back from its official X handle with an even more stinging post on how the BJP was “the original poaching master”.
Stating that “Hypocrisy ki bhi seema hoti hain!” (Hypocrisy too has limits), the BRS pointed out that for over the last decade that the BJP has ruled this country, it was always able to break Congress governments across the country.
“Your undemocratic ways have continued over the years because of the inept opposition that the Congress is,” it said in the post, which had caricatures resembling Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi and dubbing them the “Forever Seller” and “Forever Buyer”.
The accompanying picture pointed out how the BJP had toppled state governments by poaching MLAs in Uttarakhand in 2016, in Manipur and Goa in 2017, in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh in 2019, and in Puducherry in 2021. The post was titled ‘The OG Poach Story across India’.
The BRS’ response to the BJP’s post also witnessed X users chipping in by tweeting how the BJP had engineered a split in the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra to topple the MVA government and install Eknath Shinde as the chief minister with it support.
