Hyderabad: In an embarrassment for the Congress party in Telangana, all three Congress MPs from the state missed voting on the Women's Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha.
After initially denying it, the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) on Saturday admitted that Revanth Reddy, Uttam Kumar Reddy and Komatireddy Venkat Reddy could not participate in the voting.
Revanth, who is also TPCC president and the two other MPs, had gone out to attend a meeting of the party’s screening committee to finalise the candidates for upcoming Assembly elections.
By the time they came back to Parliament, the voting was done on the Bill. The leaders were juggling between the Parliament session and screening committee meeting happening concurrently.
Ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) slammed the Congress party over its three MPs not participating in the voting, which took place on Wednesday.
It alleged that the three MPs walked out of the Lok Sabha at the crucial time of voting on the Bill.
The BRS alleged that the hypocrisy of the Congress party on women empowerment was exposed once again.
The Congress leaders initially denied that its MPs were not present during the voting. However, the party later posted on X that the MPs could not participate in the voting as they were working for the state’s interests. It is a shame that this is being politicised, it said.
“We may not have been there at the time, but our full support was given at the CWC meeting in Hyderabad,” reads the statement.
The party also stated that in 2010, the Congress government led by Sonia Gandhi brought a bill to provide 33 percent reservations without any conditions like census and delimitation redistribution of constituencies). Even though it has full power to implement the bill today, the BJP government has brought the bill with conditions so that it does not come into force immediately.
However, the Congress party under the chairmanship of Mallikarjun Kharge and the leadership of Sonia Gandhi supported the bill, clearly stating this is the dream of Rajiv Gandhi and the policy of the Congress party.
The party recalled that the Congress MPs fought in the Parliament for Telangana state and bore the attack by pepper sprays. It alleged that KCR did not even bother to visit the MPs who were admitted to hospital due to the pepper spray.
—IANS