BRS MLA Kaushik Reddy placed under house arrest in Hyderabad

Hyderabad, Sep 12 (IANS) Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA P. Kaushik Reddy was Thursday placed under house arrest by the police in Hyderabad to prevent him from leaving for the house of defected MLA Arekapudi Gandhi to offer him BRS scarf.

Police personnel were deployed outside Kaushik Reddy's residence in Kondapur to prevent him from leaving the house.

The police have also beefed up security at the residence of Gandhi, who has announced that if Kaushik Reddy does not come to his house, he will visit him.

Gandhi, who got elected to the Assembly on a BRS ticket but joined the Congress party in July, was on Monday appointed as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), a post usually given to opposition members.

The BRS slammed the ruling Congress party for appointing a turncoat MLA as PAC chairman and demanded his disqualification along with the disqualification of nine other defectors, but Gandhi claimed that he was still in the opposition.

The BRS leaders alleged that Gandhi was trying to escape disqualification as they had stepped up their efforts to get the defectors disqualified following the High Court directive on disqualification petitions.

The High Court had Monday directed the Assembly Speaker to decide within four weeks on the petitions filed by BRS seeking the disqualification of three defected MLAs.

BRS legislators KP Vivekananda and Padi Kaushik Reddy on Wednesday met the State Legislature Secretary and submitted a memorandum, urging him to start the process of hearing the three disqualification petitions by the Speaker as directed by the Telangana High Court.

They also wanted the Speaker to take action on seven other disqualification petitions which were pending with him.

Reacting to Gandhi's statement that he was still in opposition, Kaushik Reddy challenged him to accept the BRS scarf. Kaushik Reddy announced that he would visit Gandhi's house on Thursday and offer him the BRS scarf.

Arekapudi Gandhi, the MLA from Serilingampally constituency in Greater Hyderabad, joined the Congress on July 13 in the presence of Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy at the latter's residence.

Gandhi was elected Serilingampally on Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ticket in 2014 but later joined TRS (now BRS). He retained the seat in 2018 and 2023.