The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Telangana on Monday suffered another major setback with a party leader and former MP Ramesh Rathore joining the ruling Telugu Rashtra Samithi.
Along with Rathore, his son and TDP youth wing general secretary Ritesh Rathore, State TDP spokesman and Adilabad district president Yunus Akbani and Asifabad district president Abdul Kalam also met the TRS president and Chief Minister and formally joined the party.
Rathore on the occasion said that he was attracted by the welfare programmes of the TRS for the weaker sections. “We are joining TRS without any precondition”, he said.
The development has come at a time when the Telugu Desam annual conference Mahanadu targeted the TRS Government.
Party president N Chandrababu Naidu asked the Telangana unit of the party to organise agitation against the State Government and promised to fully support it. The Mahanadu had even passed a resolution vowing to dislodge TRS Government and form its own Government in Telangana in 2019.
Over the last three years the TDP was reduced in the State to a ramshackle existence as 11 of the 15 legislators in including floor leader E Dayakar Rao defected to the TRS. list of senior TDP leaders who joined the TRS was also very long.