Ahead of Telangana Assembly Elections-2023, former MLA Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy on Wednesday announced that he has quit from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and re-joined Congress. He wants to fight against Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao in Gajwel apart from his earlier constituency of Munugode-which he won in the 2018 elections as a Congress candidate. He resigned from Congress and as a legislator in August, 2022 leading to a by-election in the Munugode Assembly constituency. Mr. Reddy joined BJP in the same month, contested the by-poll and lost it to BRS candidate Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy.
Mr. Reddy, who had apparently been approached by the Congress high command to rejoin his parent party, accepted the proposal and the announcement of his resignation from BJP came as expected on Wednesday morning. The Congress is yet to announce its candidates for Munugode and Gajwel constituencies.
Sources close to him revealed to The Hindu that Mr. Reddy wants to be fielded by the Congress from Gajwel against the Chief Minister KCR since he resigned as MLA and forced the Munugode by-poll only to take on Mr. KCR’s rule. At that time, he felt the BJP was the right choice but now things have changed and the BJP doesn’t look serious enough to defeat the BRS, said Mr. Reddy. “The perception that BJP and BRS were together has reached the bottom and it won’t change in these 40 days,” he said.
