BRS demands disqualification of BJP MP from Parliament

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) on Wednesday demanded disqualification of Karimnagar Lok Sabha MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar following his arrest in 10th class paper leak case.

State ministers and other BRS leaders said Lok Sabha Speaker should take immediate action and disqualify Sanjay for committing an offence of a grave nature.

Sanjay, who is also President of BJP's Telangana unit, was arrested by the police in Karimnagar after midnight. He will be produced in a court in Warangal later in the day.

Sate finance minister T. Harish Rao said they were requesting Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to disqualify Sanjay.

Harish Rao described Sanjay as the mastermind in leakage of Hindi question paper of Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and claimed that he has been caught red-handed.

He alleged that, unable to fight BRS politically, the BJP leader was playing with the future of children. "BJP's politics has touched a new low. They can stoop to any level for political gains," he said.

Harish Rao said that Prashanth who was arrested for question paper leak in Warangal on Tuesday is a BJP worker and he had sent the paper to Bandi Sanjay while the examination was still on. "This was a conspiracy to defame the government but he has been caught red-handed," said the minister.

He pointed out that on Tuesday afternoon BJP leaders in Warangal staged a protest demanding arrests in the paper leak case but in the evening they demanded release of the accused in the case.

The minister said the accused called Bandi Sanjay several times on his mobile shared the leaked question paper widely on social media to defame the government.

The finance minister alleged that Bandi Sanjay was also behind the leakage of a Telugu question paper in Tandur on Monday. He said that the teacher who took a photo of the question paper at the exam centre and shared it on WhatsApp was a leader of the teachers' union backed by the BJP.

Ministers Srinivas Goud, P. Ajay Kumar, several BRS MLAs and other leaders also addressed separate news conferences to demand disqualification of Sanjay from Parliament. They also demanded stringent action against him for the paper leak.

Minister K.T. Rama Rao alleged that BJP leaders were playing with the lives of innocent students and unemployed by leaking question papers for their selfish politics.

"If a madman has a stone in his hand, there is danger to passersby but if a party is in the hands of the same madman, it is a danger to democracy," tweeted KTR, who is also working president of BRS.