Hyderabad: The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) will abstain from voting in the vice presidential election on Tuesday (September 9).

BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao announced the party's decision at a media conference here on Monday. The party has four members in the Rajya Sabha and none in the Lok Sabha.

Rao based the party's decision on the alleged failure of both the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – whose principal constituent, the BJP, leads the Union government – and the INDIA bloc whose Congress party rules Telangana to bail out the southern state's farmers from a urea crisis.

The severe shortage of urea had caused deep distress among farmers and hence the BRS decided to use the vice presidential election as a platform to express its solidarity with them, he said.

Rao said the contestants in the election – the NDA's C.P. Radhakrishnan and INDIA's Justice (retired) B. Sudershan Reddy – were not in the fray in an individual capacity but as representatives of the BJP and the Congress respectively, both of which he said were the cause of the suffering faced by farmers.

A BRS delegation met Union chemicals and fertilisers minister J.P. Nadda to request the Union government to despatch urea consignments urgently but to no avail, he said, adding that the state government for its part lacked the drive to press New Delhi to act fast.

He said the party did not have anything against either Radhakrishnan or Reddy – the latter of whom he praised for his support for a separate Telangana – and that their integrity was never in doubt, but that the BRS decided to stay away from the election as a party wedded to farmers' welfare.

In fact, it would have opted for NOTA if such a facility was available in the election, but in its absence Rao said abstention remained the only way for the BRS to register its protest.

He recalled that the BRS had a fortnight ago pledged its support in the election to whichever party resolved Telangana's urea crisis. However, neither the BJP nor the Congress had taken the lead so far, he added.

BRS president and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had discussed the matter with the party's four MPs before it took its final decision, he said.

The BRS's decision to abstain from the vote is a sharp deviation from the support it extended to opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha in the presidential election of 2022. In power in Telangana at the time, the BRS had even arranged a grand reception for Sinha upon his arrival in Hyderabad as well as a meeting thereafter during his election campaign in the state.

The party took the stand that it would support Sinha irrespective of the Congress's backing for him. This was despite the BRS's bitter rivalry with the Congress.

The BRS's stance regarding the vice presidential election was keenly awaited as its support to Reddy would be seen by some as amounting to collusion with the Congress, while some others would view any opposition to his candidature as appeasement of the BJP at a time when the Congress government in the state is seeking a CBI probe into charges of corruption and irregularities in the construction of the Kaleswaram Lift Irrigation Project.

The BRS was on a sticky wicket after Reddy emerged as a source of Telugu pride in the election. Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy also appealed to all parties, but mainly the BRS, seeking a conscientious vote for Reddy.

The ruling Telugu Desam Party and the opposition YSR Congress Party in Andhra Pradesh, however, have decided to support Radhakrishnan's candidature.

Kavitha ‘should not have aired her grievances publicly’

On the recent suspension of his sister K. Kavitha from the BRS, Rao said the party had nothing more to say as it had already acted against her. However, he said he found fault with her for airing her grievances openly instead of using the party's own fora.

Rao also targeted the Congress for ordering a CBI probe into the Kaleshwaram project to divert attention from what he said are its failures.

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