Of the 55 candidates, Reddys walked away with a lion's share — 17 tickets — followed by BCs (12), Velamas (7), SCs (12), STs (2), Brahmins (2), and Muslims (3).
File photo of Telangana Congress chief A Revanth Reddy (X)
The caste composition of the Congress’s candidates in the first list has driven home the point that, like any other party in Telangana, the Congress too is banking on the dominant castes to navigate through the choppy waters of the Assembly elections.
Of the 55 candidates on the first list releasefd by the Congress, Reddys walked away with a lion’s share — 17 tickets — followed by Backward Classes (BCs, 12), Velamas (7), Scheduled Castes (SCs, 12), Scheduled Tribes (STs, 2), Brahmins (2), and Muslims (3).
Of these, only six candidates are women.
Among the BCs, Yadavas and Kurumas got two each, Most Backward Castes (MBCs) got four, Munnuru Kapus got two, while Mudirajus and Padmashalis got one each. Among the MBCs, Rajikas, Merus, Bodelas, and Valmikis got one each.
The Congress has lived up to to its billing that it is heavily dominated by the Reddys and, this time around too, it is going to be that way, as the caste composition in the second list might be more or less along the same lines.
Though, on the face of it, the BCs seemed to have got a good number of tickets, the BC leaders reached by South First contended that the figure is misleading. The Congress has nominated BCs for four Assembly segments in the old city of Hyderabad, where there is no BC population.
“They are basically Muslim-dominated areas. What is the point in allotting tickets where the Congress has never won in the past?” asked state BC Welfare Association president Jajula Srinivas Goud.
According to him, there is an undercurrent of disapproval among the BCs over the upper castes riding roughshod over them. He says that everyone acknowledges the fact that BCs commprise more than 50 percent of Telangana’s population.
But when it comes to allotting tickets, the parties conveniently gloss over this fact. The Congress is no exception, he told South First, adding that he is not very sure how many seats will go to the BCs in the final list of candidates for the remaining 64 seats, which might be out in a day or two.
Meanwhile, anxiety continues to build among aspirants for the remaining 64 seats. As there is more than one good candidate for many seats, the party seems to have deferred the decision on them.
It is learnt that the decision is on hold for some seats because the CPI(M) and CPI, which are in alliance with the Congress, are asking for the same seats that important leaders of the Congress are vying for.
While this is so, former Minister Mohammad Ali Shabbir, who had his eyes set on Kamareddy, now wants to move to the neighbouring constituency of either Yellareddy or Nizamabad. This is on account of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao deciding to contest from there, which had effectively sealed his hopes of winning the seat.
As Yellareddy is basically a Congress seat, Shabbir hopes to win the election from there. In the 2018 election, Jajala Surender, who won on the Congress ticket, later moved on to the BRS. As Shabbir has good contacts in Yellareddy, he hopes to turn the tables against the BRS there.
In Nizamabad, though there is a strong candidate in sitting MLA B Ganesh Gupta, Shabbir believes that he still has a chance there, as there is a substantial number of minority Muslim voters.
Sources in the Congress told South First that the party is persuading Shabbir to remain in Kamareddy and become a giant killer, but he doubts whether he will be able to slay KCR.
The Congress has kept in abeyance LB Nagar with former MP Madhu Goud Yaskhi seeking a ticket for the seat, while the local leaders had taken serious objection to his candidature, arguing that he is an outsider to the constituency.
Ibrahimpatnam is another bone of contention between MP Komatireddy Venkata Reddy and TPCC president A Revanth Reddy. Similarly, there is no consensus on who should be fielded from Suryapet, Amberpet, Khairatabad, Jubilee Hills, and several others constituencies.
About 20 seats have been kept on hold for want of consensus among the leaders.
In Khammam and Nalgonda districts, the party is facing a problem from the Communist parties, which are its alliance partners. Though they had reconciled to two seats each, there is no agreement as to which they should be.
In Khammam district, except for two seats, the Congress has kept the remaining eight seats pending.
A decision is yet to be taken as to where former MP Ponguleti Srinivasa Reddy and former minister Thummala Nageswara Rao should be fielded from. Paleru is one constituency both the leaders are showing interest in contesting from, while the Communists too are interested in it.
The Gordian knot is difficult to untangle as the party cannot deny seats that the Communists ask for and, at the same time, cannot leave the two tall leaders in the lurch after promising them the Moon when they invited them to join its ranks.
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