Telangana High Court Disqualifies Congress MLA Danam Nagender Under Anti-Defection Law
Telangana High Court disqualifies Khairatabad MLA Danam Nagender under anti-defection law, setting aside the Speaker's decision to let him continue after joining Congress.
The Telangana High Court on Friday disqualified Khairatabad MLA Danam Nagender under the anti-defection law, overturning a decision by Assembly Speaker G Prasad Kumar that had allowed him to retain his seat after switching from the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) to the Congress.
A Bench of Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice G Mohiuddin ruled that Nagender stands disqualified with effect from the date of his election. The order comes as a significant blow to the ruling Congress in Telangana, which has drawn several BRS legislators into its fold since the December 2023 Assembly polls.
Nagender was elected on a BRS ticket from Khairatabad in the 2023 elections, a seat he had also won in 2018. He left the party and joined the Congress in March 2024, and subsequently contested the Lok Sabha election from Secunderabad in May that year while still serving as an MLA. He lost that contest to the BJP's G Kishan Reddy.
The disqualification ruling stems from petitions filed by BJP floor leader Aleti Maheshwar Reddy and BRS Huzurabad MLA Padi Kaushik Reddy. Their pleas challenged the Speaker's decision to reject their request to disqualify Nagender. Maheshwar Reddy had stated that when he visited the Speaker's office on July 1, 2024, to submit his petition, it was not accepted.
The matter forms part of a broader set of defection cases before the High Court. On September 9, 2024, the court had directed the Legislative Assembly Secretary to place disqualification petitions concerning three MLAs who had joined the Congress before the Assembly and to take action within four weeks. Justice B Vijaysen Reddy, hearing the pleas against BRS MLAs Danam Nagender, Kadiam Srihari and Tellam Venkat Rao, had instructed that the petitions be placed before the Speaker so that schedules for personal hearings could be drawn up under the anti-defection law.
Besides the two petitions against Nagender, a third was filed by BRS Quthbullapur MLA K P Vivekanand Goud, seeking the disqualification of Tellam Venkat Rao, the Bhadrachalam MLA, and Kadiyam Srihari, the MLA from Station Ghanpur. The court clubbed all three petitions together.
Kadiyam Srihari had won the Station Ghanpur seat as a BRS candidate in December 2023 but left the party and joined the Congress within three months, along with his daughter, Kadiam Kavya, who went on to win the Warangal Lok Sabha seat in the April 2024 elections. Tellam Venkat Rao is a first-time MLA who won Bhadrachalam on a BRS ticket in the same Assembly polls.