Hyderabad:
The Telangana Police can continue investigation into allegations by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s party TRS that four of their MLAs were approached to switch parties.
The rival BJP had filed a petition in the Telangana High Court demanding a probe by a “neutral” agency, such as the Central Bureau of Investigation, after which the court had put on hold the state police investigation pending the hearing on the BJP petition.
Now, the court has removed the stay on the police investigation.
The court also issued notice to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, or TRS, government to respond to the BJP’s concerns over the need for an impartial investigation on November 18.
K Chandrashekar Rao, or KCR, recently renamed the TRS to Bharat Rashtra Samithi hoping for a wider national appeal ahead of the general election in 2024.
Last week, KCR called an unexpected news conference and screened a series of videos that he said backed his party’s MLA poaching charges against the BJP.
Presenting the four MLAs of his TRS party, who had supposedly thwarted an attempt to buy them out, KCR claimed he had more than an hour of hidden camera footage that implicated the BJP. He played five minutes of the tapes at the news conference.
KCR has alleged “Delhi brokers” tried to bribe four MLAs of his party.
The BJP has denied allegations of poaching attempts, declaring that it was a drama “scripted, directed and produced” by the Chief Minister.