Hyderabad: The Telugu Desam Party in Telangana state Monday suffered another major setback with a party politburo member and former MP Ramesh Rathore joining the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti.
Along with Rathore, his son and TDP youth wing general secretary Ritesh Rathore, state TDP spokesman and Adilabad district president Yunus Akbani and Asifabad district president Abdul Kalam also met the TRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao and formally joined the party.
Rathore said that he was attracted by the welfare programmes of the TRS for the weaker sections.
“We are joining the TRS without any precondition,” he said.
The development has come at a time when the Telugu Desam annual conference Mahanadu targeted the TRS government. The TDP president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu asked the Telangana unit of the party to organise agitation against the state government and promised to fully support it. The Mahanadu even passed a resolution vowing to dislodge the TRS government and form its own government in Telangana in 2019.
Over the last three years the TDP has been reduced in the state to a ramshackle existence as 11 of the 15 legislators, including floor leader Errabelli Dayakar Rao, defected to the TRS. The list of senior TDP leaders who joined the TRS is also very long.
