BRS MLA offers bangles, sarees to defectors; Congress leader hits back showing ‘slipper’

P Kaushik Reddy said he wanted to send sarees and bangles as ‘gifts’ to the defectors. Congress leader said he insulted women with his disrespectful comments.

An MLA from the Bharatiya Rashtra Samiti (BRS) offered sarees and bangles to his former colleagues who defected to the ruling Congress party after the state assembly elections. Outraged by his remark, women members of the Congress asked for his immediate apology, news agency PTI reported.

BRS MLA P Kaushik Reddy said he wanted to send sarees and bangles as ‘gifts’ to the defectors. (India news24*7 (X))

P Kaushik Reddy said he wanted to send sarees and bangles as ‘gifts’ to the defectors. He also offered to send these via courier to their residences. "If the defected MLAs have any shame or guts, they should first resign from their posts and face fresh elections. I will be sending each of them saris and bangles. They should wear them and move in public," he said during a press conference on Wednesday.

Congress leader B Shobha Rani said Reddy insulted women with his disrespectful comments. In response to sarees and bangles, Rani took off her footwear and warned the BRS MLA over his remarks.

"A woman is the President of the country. It was a woman, Sonia Gandhi, who granted Telangana state. Women were at the forefront of the Telangana struggle. Kaushik Reddy has insulted women with his rubbish talk. If he insults women again, he will have to face this (footwear)," warned Rani, who is also the chairperson of the Telangana State Women's Cooperative Development Corporation.

Other Congress leaders asked Kaushik to send sarees and bangles to BRS president and former Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and the party's Working President K T Rama Rao, for starting the culture of defections in the state.

They also vouched to launch a police complaint against the BRS MLA and asked the Telangana State Women's Commission to take cognisance of Reddy's comments. Several women leaders from the ruling party also urged the Speaker to suspend him from the Assembly.

Ten MLAs from the opposition BRS have joined the Congress party after the latter won 64 seats in the 2023 state assembly elections. The victory propelled the party to power after a decade long rule by the BRS.

BRS MLAs KP Vivekanand and Kaushik Reddy met the Secretary of the state assembly and asked him to place the disqualification petition against three defectors before the Speaker. They also demanded that the Speaker fix a schedule to hear disqualification pleas as ordered by the Telangana High Court.

(With inputs from PTI)