Ponguleti Keeps His Word: Entire Khammam dist now in Congress fold

Khammam: “No BRS flag would wave in this district,” vowed prominent Congress leader Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy during the assembly elections. He was almost there. All but Bhadrachalam were won by Congress. The lone BRS candidate, Tellam Venkat Rao, won from Bhadrachalam. Eight of the 10 assembly constituencies were won by the Congress, and one CPM candidate won with the backing of Congress. The loss of Bhadrachalam has since been a sore issue for the ruling party, after Tellam joined Congress in Hyderabad on Sunday.

Ponguleti who had taken a vow to ensure that all the 9 seats in the district would be won by the Congress finally fulfilled his pledge. Soon after the election, reports of likelihood of Tellam joining Congress started doing the rounds and the issue has since been kept alive by the rumour mongering on social media. Even the BRS leaders were suspicious of his moves and it seemed it was merely a question of when, not if, Tellam would jump on the bandwagon of Congress party. The Sunday switchover dealt a rude shock to the party, wiping it out from the Assembly map of the district.

K V Rama Rao, a prominent politician, expressed his disapproval of Tellam’s desertion. He remarked that given the current political climate, leaders’ defections were becoming commonplace. Senior BRS leaders, including MP K Keshav Rao and MLAs D Nagender and K Sri Hari, who had benefited from their positions of power during the BRS party’s ten-year rule, left the party for self-aggrandizement. The Bhadrachalam Constituency always had its MLAs aligning with the opposition party. And the trend was reversed by Ponguleti’s maneuvers.