Three Congress MLAs quit to join TRS party

HYDERABAD: Coming good on their recent threats, three Telangana MLAs -- Jupalli Krishna Rao, Somarapu Satyanarayana and T Rajaiah -- bid goodbye to the Congress and joined the TRS Sunday.Krishna Rao and Rajaiah faxed their resignations to PCC president Botcha Satyanarayana before announcing their decision and then joined the TRS in the presence of K Chandrasekhar Rao.Somarapu Satyanarayana was an associate member of the Congress, so he did not have to send his papers to the PCC chief.The three MLAs blamed chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy for stalling Telangana statehood and criticised Telangana ministers and MLAs for failing to do anything concrete which only emboldened the party to harden its stand against bifurcation.According to sources, there was a lot of behind-the-scenes activity before the trio decided to call it quits.The pink party had been pursuing Krishna Rao as he has a good following in his constituency (Kollapur).His stock went up since he resigned his cabinet berth as the fallout of a dispute with minister D K Aruna and undertook out a padayatra for Telangana.Somarapu Satyanarayana, who represents Ramagundam in Karimnagar district, too has been a vocal separatist and did not yield to pressure from the government to try to break the Singareni Collieries miners’ strike earlier.He is a prize catch for TRS given his support among Singareni employees. Dr T Rajaiah (Station Ghanpur, Warangal district), too was very active in the Sakala Janula Samme this month and figures in some of the cases filed against the strikers by the government.In meetings of Telangana Congress MLAs, he was a hardliner who insisted that the movement will not gather momentum unless elected reps resign. Despite the exit of the MLAs, PCC chief Botcha put up a brave face, saying it was nothing to worry about.