BRS walks out over CM Revanth Reddy’s ‘abusive remarks’

Hyderabad: The State Legislative Assembly on Wednesday witnessed an uproar after the main opposition, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), was denied an opportunity to counter a deliberate and intense attack launched by the treasury benches against the party and its president, Leader of Opposition K Chandrashekhar Rao. With its members prevented from countering the verbal attack on the floor of the House, as Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy led the attack with what the BRS called unparliamentary and intemperate language, BRS members staged a walkout from the Assembly.

The commotion began when Revanth Reddy repeatedly used derogatory language to speak about Chandrashekhar Rao, forcing the BRS members to walk into the well of the house to lodge their protest with the Speaker. Repeated attempts made by them to beat back the offensive of the Congress were thwarted. The BRS MLAs then walked out, and sought to give a rebuttal at least by speaking to the press at the Assembly Media Point. However, in a first in the recent history of the Telangana Assembly, the MLAs were denied even access to the Media Point by the marshals who said members were now prohibited to speak at the Media Point when the session was in progress.

The BRS members sought to know from the Chief Marshal whether there was any such rule preventing members from speaking to media. He assured to get back to them after talking to the Speaker. But as he did not turn up, the BRS members staged a protest near the BRSLP office.

Senior MLA Kadiyam Srihari, who was scheduled to speak on the Vote-on-Account budget in the day, had to move out of the house with his mission left incomplete due to the continued attack from the treasury benches, after which he also joined party leaders KT Rama Rao and T Harish Rao in the protest.