The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) announced on Monday that it will abstain from voting in Tuesday’s vice-presidential election, citing the ongoing crisis of urea shortage faced by Telangana farmers.
BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao (KTR) said the decision was taken during a meeting chaired by party president and former Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. “The decision has been conveyed to our Rajya Sabha MPs, who have been asked to stay away from the polling,” he said.
The party, which currently has four members in the Rajya Sabha and none in the Lok Sabha, said its abstention was an “expression of anguish” over both the BJP-led Centre and the Congress-ruled state government allegedly ignoring farmers’ pleas for timely supply of fertilisers.
“The BRS could have exercised NOTA if it were available in the vice-presidential election. Since it is not, we are abstaining,” KTR said. He alleged that scuffles were breaking out among farmers waiting in long queues for urea.
The decision mirrors that of Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which earlier in the day also declared it would stay away from the polls.
The vice-presidential election was necessitated by the resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar on July 21, citing health reasons. The contest will see NDA nominee C.P. Radhakrishnan face off against INDIA bloc candidate Justice Sudarshan Reddy.
Congress MP and Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee spokesperson Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy criticised the BRS decision, calling it “absurd” to link the election to the urea crisis. He accused BRS of losing touch with Telangana’s founding cause since it rebranded from TRS to BRS.
“In refusing to vote for Justice Sudarshan Reddy — who is not a political figure but a defender of democracy — the BRS has shown that it is becoming politically irrelevant in Parliament,” he said.
In the 2022 vice-presidential polls, the then-TRS had supported Opposition candidate Margaret Alva.
