Six months after defection, Jagtial MLA’s loyalties still under question

It has now become a point of frequent trouble, both inside the Congress party and outside

KARIMNAGAR: Even six months after Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy welcomed Jagtial MLA Sanjay Kumar into the Congress, the controversy surrounding the legislator’s loyalties is yet to die down. In fact, it has now become a point of frequent trouble, both inside the Congress and outside. This was after Sanjay Kumar, after the defection issue reached the court, denied that he had joined the Congress even while continuing to sport a Congress scarf and attending all the party programmes.

On Sunday, when Huzurabad MLA Padi Kaushik Reddy questioned Sanjay Kumar while the latter was speaking at a district review meeting in Karimnagar Collectorate. Kaushik Reddy wanted Sanjay Kumar to make clear which party he was representing at the meeting, triggering a verbal duel between the two. Kaushik Reddy was taken out of the meeting venue by the police, with three cases being registered against him later in connection with the incident.

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Sanjay Kumar, who was elected on a BRS ticket from Jagtial in 2023 Assembly elections, shifted his loyalties to the Congress in June 2024 but with the defection and disqualification of defectors becoming an issue, had tried to cite technical reasons stating that he was still a BRS MLA and that he had not become a Congress party member.

The issue triggered fissures within the Congress as well, with senior Congress leader and MLC T Jeevan Reddy strongly opposing Sanjay Kumar’s induction into the party without his knowledge. The murder of Jeevan Reddy’s close aide Maru Ganga Reddy in Jabithapur of Jagtial rural mandal on October 22 last year saw Jeevan Reddy accusing Sanjay Kumar of being behind the murder. The senior leader had even threatened to resign from his post, a storm that the party managed to survive after the high command intervened.

In a more recent incident, Jeevan Reddy had begun walking out of a party meeting in Nizamabad after he found that his name was missing from the meeting ledger even when Sanjay Kumar’s name was there. It was after other party leaders pacified the furious MLC that he finally relented and sat for the meeting. He said to have later taken up the issue with TPCC president Mahesh Kumar Goud.

After Kaushik Reddy’s incident with Sanjay Kumar on Sunday, Congress leaders in the erstwhile district have again voiced their dissent over Sanjay Kumar being given prominence in many meetings despite him being reluctant to openly declare that he was a Congressman now.