The party has announced the candidature of Dr Kadiyam Kavya from Warangal and Kasani Ganeshwar Mudiraj from Chevella.
The party has replaced Warangal sitting MP Pasunuri Dayakar and from Chevella the party has replaced Dr Ranjith Reddy. (Supplied)
Hours after the BJP announced its second list of candidates for Telangana, the BRS on Wednesday, 13 March, announced its own list — of four candidates — for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The party announced the candidature of Dr Kadiyam Kavya from Warangal, Kasani Ganeshwar Mudiraj from Chevella, Gali Anil Kumar from Zaheerabad, and Bajireddy Govardhan from Nizamabad.
The BRS thereby replaced two sitting MPs: Pasunuri Dayakar from Warangal and Dr Ranjith Reddy from Chevella.
Former Zaheerabad MP BB Patil has joined the BJP and is going to contest the Lok Sabha elections on a saffron party ticket.
The Nizamabad constituency is currently represented by the BJP’s Arvind Dharmapuri.
BRS chief and former chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao on 11 March held a meeting with the leaders of the Chevella constituency, which consists of both urban IT hubs and rural areas. Sitting MP Dr Ranjith Reddy was absent at the meeting.
With the Congress in power in the state and the BRS losing leaders at regular intervals, where many sitting MPs have moved to either the BJP or the Congress, Ranjith Reddy was speculated to make a similar move.
However, both the BJP and the Congress have now announced their candidates for the Chevella constituency.
At this juncture, it is also being said Ranjith Reddy was not ready to fight the elections from the seat even after being persuaded by KCR. He is now said to be eyeing the Medak seat on a Congress ticket.
This aside, Maheshwaram MLA and former minister P Sabitha Indra Reddy’s son P Karthik Reddy was also eyeing a BRS ticket from that seat.
However, the party has now given the ticket to Kasani Ganeshwar Mudiraj, the former chief of the Telangana unit of the Telugu Desam Party.
He joined the BRS just before the Telangana Assembly election when TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu decided his party would not participate in the polls.
Till Wednesday afternoon, it was rumoured that BRS stalwart and Station Ghanpur MLA Kadiyam Srihari would join the Congress and contest the Lok Sabha election from the Warangal seat.
Meanwhile, the Congress was supposed to give his daughter, Dr Kadiyam Kavya, a ticket from the Assembly constituency.
But, in a surprising move, the BRS party announced the candidature of Dr Kadiyam Kavya from the Warangal Lok Sabha seat, replacing Pasunuri Dayakar.
The BRS lost most of the Assembly seats under the Warangal Parliamentary constituency in last year’s elections.
It thus appears to have fielded Kavya as her father Srihari was the sitting MP from the Lok Sabha constituency in 2014.
The BRS party has fielded Gali Anil Kumar from the Zaheerabad Lok Sabha constituency.
He was the vice-president of the Telangana Congress, who resigned from the post in November 2023, in the run-up to the Telangana Assembly elections.
He was said to have resigned from the Congress as he was denied a ticket from the Narsapur Assembly constituency.
Just a week before the election, he joined BRS and supported the BRS candidate from the Narsapur Assembly seat.
The constituency, which borders Karnataka, has a significant population of Lingayats.
Both BJP candidate BB Patil and Congress candidate Suresh Kumar Shetkar are Lingayat leaders, while Anil Kumar is a Munnuru-Kapu.
Going beyond the family politics in Nizamabad, the KCR has denied the ticket to his daughter K Kavitha, who contested twice from the constituency and won in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The party has given a ticket to Bajireddy Goverdhan Reddy, the 69-year-old former MLA from Nizamabad Rural.
He lost the 2023 Assembly election. However, he had been an MLA five times from different Assembly constituencies.
He won five successive elections on Congress and BRS tickets from four different constituencies — Armoor, Banswada, Dichpally and Nizamabad Rural — in the Nizamabad Lok Sabha constituency.
KCR announced the names of four candidates on Monday, 4 March. The BRS fielded former MP B Vinod Kumar from Karimnagar, former minister Koppula Eeswar from Peddapalli, sitting MP Malothu Kavitha from Mahabubabad, and BRS Lok Sabha leader Nama Nageswara Rao from Khammam.
Interestingly, Nama Nageswara Rao’s name as a candidate from Khammam came amid strong speculations that he was looking to join the BJP. The BRS has already lost several MPs to the BJP and the Congress.
(Edited by Arkadev Ghoshal)
May 03, 2024
May 03, 2024
May 03, 2024
May 02, 2024
May 02, 2024
May 02, 2024
