HYDERABAD: The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has decided to abstain from voting in the vice-presidential election scheduled for Tuesday, the party’s working president KT Rama Rao said on Monday.
“The decision was taken at a meeting of party president and former Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao with party leaders,” KTR said. The decision has been conveyed to the party’s Rajya Sabha MPs who have been told to stay away from the polling, he added.
Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal has also decided to abstain from voting in the vice presidential election.
The BRS currently has four Rajya Sabha members, and does not have any members in the Lok Sabha. The vice president is elected by an Electoral College, comprising elected members of the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, and the nominated members of the Upper House.
In the 2022 vice-presidential elections, the BRS (then Telangana Rashtra Samithi) had voted for the Opposition candidate Margaret Alva. At the time, it had 16 MPs, including nine Lok Sabha members.
The election to be held on Tuesday was necessitated by the resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar, who stepped down on July 21, the first day of the monsoon session, citing health reasons. Since he left office, Dhankhar hasn’t met any Opposition leaders.
KTR said that though both the candidates - NDA nominee C P Radhakrishnan and the INDIA bloc’s Justice Sudarshan Reddy, were good people, the BRS chose to abstain from voting to highlight the concerns of Telangana farmers who were being ignored by both the BJP at the Centre and the Congress government in the state.
{{/usCountry}}KTR said that though both the candidates - NDA nominee C P Radhakrishnan and the INDIA bloc’s Justice Sudarshan Reddy, were good people, the BRS chose to abstain from voting to highlight the concerns of Telangana farmers who were being ignored by both the BJP at the Centre and the Congress government in the state.
{{/usCountry}}“The decision to skip the Vice-Presidential election this time is an expression of anguish of Telangana’s farmers over the shortage of urea in the state,” he said.
The BRS working president accused the BJP and Congress of failing to address the urea shortage, stating that scuffles were occurring among farmers while they waited in queues for urea.
“The BRS could have exercised the option of NOTA had it been available in the vice-presidential election. Since it is not there, we are abstaining from voting,” he said.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee spokesperson and Bhongir MP Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy lashed out at the BRS for its decision to abstain from voting. “It is absurd on the part of the BRS to claim it won’t vote in the Vice-Presidential election on the pretext of urea shortage in the state,” he said.
Pointing out that the BRS already has zero seats in the Lok Sabha, he ridiculed the party for making excuses. “Ever since the party shed its original name, TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samithi) and rebranded itself as BRS, it had distanced itself from the Telangana sentiment and effectively forgotten the very cause it was born for,” he said.
The Congress MP said the Opposition candidate, Justice Sudarshan Reddy, did not belong to any political party and was a person with a good understanding of democracy. “By refusing to vote for such a candidate and choosing to stay away from the election, the BRS has shown that it has become an irrelevant party both in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha,” Reddy said.