Hyderabad: Responding to the political storm surrounding the appointment of Congress MLA Arekapudi Gandhi as the chairman of the public accounts committee (PAC) and the criticism from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), chief minister A Revanth Reddy said that when Congress was the principal opposition party, the then BRS government had appointed a representative from AIMIM as the chairman of the committee.

The chief minister recalled that in 2014, despite his and Errabelli Dayakar Rao’s names being proposed by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) for the position of Business Advisory Committee (BAC) chairman, they were rejected by the BRS government.

On BRS MLAs defecting to the Congress party, Revanth refused to comment on it stating the matter is under the review of Telangana High Court and Speaker of the Assembly.

The chief minister also accused BRS of attempting to manipulate Congress over the PAC chairman appointment, alleging that the BRS had six members in the PAC, while Congress had only four. He noted that the Speaker had accommodated members from BJP, CPI, and AIMIM, reducing Congress’ representation in the committee.

“We have 65 MLAs, and if there is no scope left for MLAs to defect it is only advantageous to us. But BJP and BRS have been making statements about pulling down our government in three months. If there was a robust legislation to prevent such coup this situation wouldn’t arise,” Revanth said.