HYDERABAD: APCC president K. Keshava Rao justified the admission of a large number of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) workers into the Congress on Saturday on the ground that they were switching sides for the Telangana cause.

At an impromptu interaction with the press, he said the Congress was not breaking the `coalition dharma' nor was it encouraging defection. "These are just friends of the Congress. They had migrated to the TRS earlier and are making their homecoming now. Why do you call it a defection," he asked.

`Nothing wrong'

He reasoned that those joining the Congress could have been encouraged to do so by the TRS leadership's faith in AICC president Sonia Gandhi in pursuing its goal of Telangana statehood.

"Their own leaders are repeatedly saying that they have faith in Soniaji. They are claiming that she alone can bring about separate Telangana. What's wrong in their followers deciding to join the party headed by Ms. Gandhi when she alone can do it someday," he said.

He said the Congress was not in favour of breaking the alliance partners' strength by engineering defection. A few persons leaving the party would not harm anyone. "If they think that this exodus will weaken the TRS, it means that its strength is fragile. Why run such a party at all".

To strengthen his argument that the Congress had not engineered the defection, he said his party had even turned down the proposal of some TRS leaders to quit during the municipal elections. "Why do we have to do it now," he said. He said the doors of the Gandhi Bhavan were always open for others just as they were for the "10,000 persons who are joining us today".

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail