Hyderabad, March 29. Telangana Assembly Speaker on Sunday referred the incident of alleged unruly behaviour of opposition BRS MLA P. Kaushik Reddy in the House to the Ethics Committee.
After legislative affairs minister D. Sridhar Babu moved a resolution to refer the alleged unethical behaviour of Kaushik Reddy against senior member Kadiyam Srihari to the Ethics Committee, Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar announced the passing of the resolution by a voice vote.
Earlier, members of the ruling Congress party accused Kaushik Reddy of insulting Srihari, a Dalit leader. They denounced certain remarks made by the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA and his body language while referring to Srihari.
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy also condemned the behaviour of Kaushik Reddy and suggested that the matter be referred to the Ethics Committee for appropriate action against him.
Kadiyam Srihari, a former Deputy Chief Minister, is one of the 10 BRS MLAs who allegedly defected to the Congress Party in 2024.
However, the Speaker has dismissed petitions by the BRS to disqualify the MLAs.
CM Revanth Reddy stated that Kadiyam Srihari is a leader of stature equal to that of the BRS president and former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Stating that no one in this country can ever cast doubt upon the honesty and commitment of Srihari, the Chief Minister said that insulting the senior leader in the House is unwarranted.
The CM also alleged that KCR was not attending the Assembly because the BRS leader does not want to face a Dalit Speaker in the House. The BRS members were also humiliating the Speaker by stalling the House continuously.
The Chief Minister accused KCR of betraying Dalits by going back on his promise to make a Dalit the first Chief Minister of Telangana.
He said that KCR deceived the entire Dalit community by assuming the office of chief minister. He also stated that during the second term, the then CM KCR revoked the post of Deputy Chief Minister and thus humiliated the entire Dalit community in the state.
He stated that KCR, during his first term, gave only one cabinet post to a Dalit leader (Koppula Eshwar).
Terming KCR anti-Dalit, he said the former Chief Minister also stripped Dalit leader Bhatti Vikramarka of the position of Leader of Opposition in the Assembly for questioning the government.
"KCR could not tolerate having a Dalit serve as the Leader of the Opposition simply because he was questioning the government".
CM Revanth Reddy noted that the Congress Government elevated Bhatti Vikramarka as Deputy CM and also Finance Minister.
He said Bhatti Vikramarka, Damodara Raja Narasimha, Seethakka, Vivek Venkataswamy, Adluri Lakshman, Ramachandra Naik, Vemula Veeresham, Addanki Dayakar and many Dalit leaders were given prominent positions in the government.
The Chief Minister also slammed the BRS over defections encouraged by it in 2014 and 2018.
Meanwhile, BRS leader and former minister T. Srinivas Yadav termed the decision to refer Kaushik Reddy’s behaviour to the Ethics Committee as a diversionary tactic by the Congress government. He claimed that Kaushik Reddy was only asking which party Srihari and others belonged to.
Srinivas Yadav said the government was trying to divert the public attention from the demand by the BRS for a House Committee to probe into allegations of corruption and illegal mining against revenue minister P. Srinivasa Reddy.