BRS retaliates with stinging reply to BJP’s poaching jab on X

Kishan Reddy also addressed Rahul Gandhi in the post, saying “Mr. Rahul Gandhi, your promises can't gloss over this blatant political opportunism! The people of Bharat are watching.”

Hyderabad: Union Coal Minister and BJP State president G Kishan Reddy’s attempt to take a potshot on ‘X’ at Congress MP Rahul Gandhi over the defections of MLAs in Telangana by shooting off the Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi’s shoulder evoked a stinging response from the BRS on Wednesday.

The verbal war over poaching was triggered by a post from Kishan Reddy on his official X handle which he captioned ‘Presenting you the MLA Poach Story of Telangana’ and said that earlier the “seller” was the Congress and the “buyer” was the BRS, adding a picture of 12 Congress MLAs joining the BRS. This was followed with a recent picture of a news report on BRS MLAs now joining the Congress in a role reversal of sorts.

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Kishan Reddy also addressed Rahul Gandhi in the post, saying “Mr. Rahul Gandhi, your promises can’t gloss over this blatant political opportunism! The people of Bharat are watching.”

However, with the BJP Minister using the BRS to score over the Congress, the BRS hit back from its official X handle with an even more stinging post on how the BJP was the original poaching master.

Stating that “Hypocrisy ki bhi seema hoti hain!” (Hypocrisy too has limits), the BRS pointed out that for over the last decade that the BJP has ruled this country, it was always able to break Congress governments across the country.

“Your undemocratic ways have continued over the years because of the inept opposition that the Congress is,” it said in the post, which had caricatures resembling Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi and dubbing them the ‘Forever Seller’ and “Forever Buyer”. The accompanying picture pointed out how the BJP had toppled State governments by poaching MLAs in Uttarakhand in 2016, in Manipur and Goa in 2017, in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh in 2019, and in Puducherry in 2021. The post was titled ‘The OG Poach Story across India’.

Hypocrisy ki bhi seema hoti hain! @kishanreddybjp

For over the last decade that the @BJP4India has ruled this country, it has always been able to break Congress governments across the country.

Your undemocratic ways have continued over the years because of the inept opposition… https://t.co/8rIuFr2dBx pic.twitter.com/0RQM8AAYhn

— BRS Party (@BRSparty) July 17, 2024

Responses to the posts saw X users chipping in with the BJP’s attempt to poach four BRS MLAs in 2022, and also how the BJP had engineered a split in the Shiv Sena to install Eknath Shinde as the Chief Minister in Maharashtra with its support.

The X war over poaching is likely to have more episodes even as the debate over defections and disqualification of the turncoat MLAs continues.