Hyderabad, Feb 6 (IANS) In a major setback to Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) ahead of Lok Sabha polls, its MP from Peddapalli, B. Venkatesh Netha on Tuesday joined the Congress party.

Venkatesh joined the Congress party in the presence of AICC general secretary K. C. Venugopal and Chief Minister and Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President A. Revanth Reddy in Delhi.

The development came hours before the meeting of Pradesh Election Committee (PEC) headed by Revanth Reddy to take up scrutiny of the applications received from ticket aspirants

The party has received a total of 306 applications from all 17 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.

Gaddam Vamshi, son of Congress MLA from Chennur, Gaddam Vivek, has applied for ticket from Peddapalli.

Vivek had quit BJP to join Congress a few days before Assembly elections and secured a ticket from Chennur.

Vivek was elected to Lok Sabha from Peddapalli in 2009 as Congress candidate. His father and former Union minister late G. Venkat Swamy was a four-time MP from Peddapalli.

In 2019, Venkatesh was elected from Peddapalli constituency, defeating his nearest rival Agam Chandrasekhar of the Congress party by a majority of over 95,000 votes.

BRS had won nine Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019. The BJP had bagged four seats and Congress three seats. The AIMIM had retained Hyderabad.