Telangana: BRS MLA Arekapudi Gandhi jumps ship, joins Congress

Hyderabad, Jul 13 (PTI) BRS MLA Arekapudi Gandhi joined the Congress in Telangana on Saturday, taking the total number of opposition legislators who switched over to the ruling party to nine.

Gandhi, elected from Serilingampally here, was welcomed into the Congress fold by Chief Minister and PCC president A Revanth Reddy.

Along with Gandhi, BRS corporators in Hyderabad Nagender Yadav, Uppalapati Srikanth, Manjula Raghunath Reddy, Narne Srinivas also defected to the Congress.

Speculation is rife that more BRS MLAs would join the ruling party in the days to come.

BRS had won 39 of the total 119 Assembly constituencies in the elections held last year, while Congress came to power winning 64 seats.

With the addition of nine BRS MLAs who crossed over to Congress, its strength rose to 74.

Six BRS MLCs also joined the ruling Congress recently. With the fresh defections, Congress' strength goes up to 10 in the 40-member Legislative Council.

MLA Danam Nagender, who was the first BRS MLA to jump ship to Congress, claimed on Friday that the Chandrasekhar Rao-led party would be left with only a few MLAs soon. PTI