Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy alleged that the ruling BJP at the helm of affairs at the Centre stooped to the level of ‘seat chori’ after resorting to ‘vote chori’, undermining democracy.“The BJP is hell-bent on repeating the ‘vote chori’ ploy it successfully implemented in the recent Assembly polls in West Bengal in Telangana too,” he charged, urging local Congress cadres to be vigilant to foil what he called ‘manipulative tactics’ of the BJP.Mr. Reddy addressed a meeting of the Congress Booth Level Agents (BLAs) of the Palair Assembly Constituency held at Yedulapuram in Khammam rural mandal on Friday.Referring to the rejection of Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan’s Rajya Sabha nomination from Madhya Pradesh, he said, “The BJP has now resorted to seat chori making a mockery of democracy. They snatched the Rajya Sabha seat from the Congress.”He alleged that the BJP was conspiring to ensure deletion of at least 30% to 35% of votes in the name of ‘bogus votes’ on one pretext or the other through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The Congress cadres should keep a tab on the upcoming exercise to safeguard the constitutional right to vote, he added.He accused the BJP-led government at the Centre of misusing Central enforcement agencies to ‘intimidate’ the elected representatives of the Opposition parties in the non-BJP-ruled States.Later, the Minister laid the foundation stone for a 0.8 MW solar power plant and a transformers repair centre at the 33/11kV sub-station in Tirumalayapalem mandal headquarters town. Published - June 12, 2026 08:22 pm IST