The Bharat Rashtra Samithi is busy deflecting talk of a possible merger or alliance with the BJP, having been forced to focus on putting its own house in order after eight of its lawmakers joined the ruling Congress in Telangana.

The latest and eighth to defect — bringing the party’s Assembly strength down from 39 to 31 — was Prakash Goud, who did so late on Friday night and was personally welcomed by chief minister A. Revanth Reddy.

Earlier, a Delhi trip by senior BRS leaders — after Telangana’s former ruling party drew a blank in the Lok Sabha polls — had sparked speculation about an outreach to the BJP.

Former MP and senior BRS leader B. Vinod Kumar then stoked the talk of a merger by saying “anything is possible in politics”.

But a source in the state BJP said the party was not keen on getting close to the BRS, especially with many leaders of former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s party facing corruption charges.

Rao’s daughter, K. Kavitha, has been in judicial custody for about five months now in the Delhi liquor policy case. The entire family is accused of amassing huge wealth while Rao was in power from June 2014 till last December.

During the run-up to the state polls in November, Union home minister Amit Shah had himself alleged that KCR — the acronym Rao is known by — was involved in scams worth thousands of crores.

On Friday, state BJP president and Union coal minister G. Kishan Reddy told a party meeting that the Congress and the BRS were equally corrupt.

He also underlined how the Congress was encouraging defections from other parties just as the BRS had done when it was in power. This was ironic since the BJP had in recent years formed governments by breaking Opposition parties in states such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.

A Delhi visit by Rao’s son and conscience keeper K.T. Rama had earlier kicked off speculation that he had met senior BJP leaders to try and strike a deal for a merger, or at least a political alliance.

However, KCR’s nephew and former finance minister T. Harish Rao said he and Rama Rao had not met any BJP leader during the visit. “We were in Delhi recently, but didn’t meet any BJP leader,” he told reporters in Hyderabad.

He said the purpose of the visit was to seek bail for Kavitha, a member of the legislative council, and explore further action over the Telangana Assembly Speaker’s failure to disqualify the BRS defectors.

A BRS source in Hyderabad said Vinod Kumar “hadn’t meant what he said and his words should not be interpreted as those of the party”.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi — later renamed BRS — had spearheaded the Telangana statehood movement and ruled the new state for two terms. But a resurgent Congress won last winter’s Assembly polls riding an anti-incumbency wave fuelled by allegations of corruption and autocratic rule by Rao and his family.

While the Congress won 64 of the 119 seats, the BRS won just 39 and the BJP, 8.

The BRS failed to win a single Lok Sabha seat this summer while the Congress and the BJP won eight each from the state, with the remaining seat going to the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen.