Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA Padi Kaushik Reddy has alleged that three Congress Members of Parliament admitted to voting for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA candidate, CP Radhakrishnan, in the Vice-Presidential elections on September 9. Reports suggest that the MPs claimed they had acted on the instructions of Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy.
“Three Congress MPs personally told me that they voted for the BJP in the Vice-Presidential elections at the instruction of Revanth Reddy. They even asked me to hold a press meet and disclose this to everyone,” the BRS MLA was quoted as saying.
Reddy also claimed that the alleged cross-voting went beyond just a few votes, asserting that 15 Congress MPs “were sold out”, of which eight were from Telangana. "When I called some of my Congress friends, they told me that 15 Congress MPs were sold out. Among them, all 8 Congress MPs from Telangana have also been sold out,” he claimed.
According to a report, Kaushik Reddy further alleged that some Congress MPs even met with Union Ministers and the Lok Sabha Speaker to confess their cross-voting. He said this was done "as part of the teacher-disciple understanding between Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his Telangana counterpart A Revanth Reddy, who was with the Telugu Desam Party till 2016."
The BRS MLA's allegations follow the victory of National Democratic Alliance candidate CP Radhakrishnan over the Congress-led INDIA bloc's candidate, Sudershan Reddy, a retired Supreme Court judge. While Radhakrishnan secured 452 votes to Reddy’s 300, the NDA officially had the support of only 427 MPs, which fuelled speculation of cross-voting from the Opposition. Additionally, 11 MPs from the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) had also voted for Radhakrishnan.
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