In another huge setback to the YSR Congress Party, its MP Ryagah Krishnaiah resigned from the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
He met Vice President and Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar in Delhi and presented his resignation letter, which was accepted.
Telangana's Krishnaiah said he resigned to concentrate on removing hurdles in strengthening the backward classes movement in Telangana.
Elected to the Rajya Sabha unanimously in 2022, he still had four years of his term to run.
Krishnaiah, President of National BC Association, was an unexpected pick by YSRCP as it had an overwhelming majority in the previous Assembly of Andhra Pradesh. His resignation came a few months after the YSRCP lost power in Andhra Pradesh to the TDP-led alliance.
It was never certain if Krishnaiah would return to the TDP, the party which he joined in 2014. He had entered the Telangana Assembly from the L.B. Nagar constituency in 2014 on a ticket of the TDP, but switched loyalty to Congress on the eve of the 2018 elections. In the 2018 Assembly elections in Telangana, he contested in vain on a Congress ticket from the Miryalaguda constituency. He resigned from Congress in 2019 and joined the party YSRCP at the invitation of President of YSRCP Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Krishnaiah is the third Rajya Sabha member of the YSRCP to quit the party in less than a month. On August 29, Mopidevi Venkataramana and Beeda Mastan Rao had resigned from the Rajya Sabha. They also left the YSRCP and joined TDP. With the resignation of Krishnaiah, the strength of YSRCP in the Rajya Sabha has come down to 8 from 11.
The TDP presently doesn't have a member in the Rajya Sabha and the by-elections to be caused by three resignation would allow it to re-enter the upper House. It has 135 members in the 175-member Assembly while its allies Jana Sena and BJP have 21 and 8 seats, respectively. YSRCP has only 11 MLAs.
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