Telangana Assembly Elections: On Being Denied Ticket, Former TRS MLA Quits Party, Joins BJP

Hyderabad: With the Telangana Rashtra Samithi denying ticket to her to contest the December 7 assembly elections in the state, former Choppadandi MLA and party leader Bodige Shoba quit the party and joined the BJP on Thursday.

Shoba, who was apparently disappointed at not being re-nominated for the seat from the ruling TRS, joined the BJP in the presence of Telangana BJP party president K Laxman, senior party leader and Secunderabad MP Bandaru Dattatraya and former state unit president G Kishan Reddy.

TRS chief and caretaker chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had Wednesday announced the names of 10 more party candidates in the TRS second list, taking the total number of nominees to 117.

There are 119 assembly segments.

S Ravishankar was preferred over Shoba in Choppadandi SC reserved Assembly constituency of Karimnagar district.

Choppadandi was one of the few seats that the TRS had not announced candidates in the first list released as soon as the Assembly was dissolved in September.

Shoba, who was hopeful of getting the Choppadandi ticket from the TRS, sought to know from KCR (as Rao is popularly known), why she was not given the party ticket to contest from the segment.

"The (caretaker) CM said the surveys are in my favour but did not announce the ticket," Shoba told reporters here after joining the BJP.

Laxman said Shoba's episode "reveals the true colours" of the TRS party and KCR's "anti-dalit" attitude.

Describing the former MLA as an active leader, he alleged that KCR was not tolerant of her pro-Dalit nature.

He alleged that during the past four-and-half-years all sections of the society, including students, unemployed youth, women and others, were cheated by the TRS and Rao.

"The promises of jobs to the youth, to make a Dalit as CM of the state, three acre land to Dalits, double bedroom houses to women, reservation to tribals were not delivered by KCR and TRS," he said.

The poll results would make the TRS "pay for its mistakes," he said.

The BJP leader also slammed the Congress-TDP alliance for the upcoming elections.