Telangana assembly polls: Congress to release first list of candidates in September

The Congress party will release its first list of candidates contesting the upcoming Telangana assembly elections in the first week of September, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The Pradesh Election Committee (PEC), headed by Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president A Revanth Reddy, met at Gandhi Bhavan in Hyderabad on Tuesday evening to scrutinise the applications received from aspiring candidates to contest for the assembly elections.

PCC working president Mahesh Kumar Goud told reporters, after the meeting, that the party had received 1,016 applications for 119 assembly seats in the state by August 25, which was the last date to apply for the candidature.

“While Yellandu assembly constituency in Khammam district received the maximum number of 38 applications, Kodangal and Jagitial assembly constituencies received only one application each,” he said.

Goud said the PEC had scrutinised the credentials of all the applicants. “We have taken various factors into consideration such as the candidates’ association with the Congress, their date of joining the party, date of application, their participation in various party activities and programmes taken up against the government, etc, to decide on their eligibility for the party ticket,” he added.

After a comprehensive scrutiny of the applications, a report would be prepared at the next meeting of the PEC, scheduled to be held on September 2, at Gandhi Bhavan. “The report would be placed before the AICC [All India Congress Committee] screening committee comprising chairman K Muralidharan and members Baba Siddique and Jignesh Mevani, on September 4,” the PCC working president said.

The committee members would hold meetings with all sections of the party, including the aspiring candidates for three days, before finalising the candidates and sending them to the high command for final approval, Goud said.

The PEC has decided that the first list would comprise of candidates belonging to Schedule Caste, Schedule Tribe and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities. “We shall release the list of candidates well in advance so that the party would go into the campaigning mode at the earliest,” the PCC leader said.

PEC member and Bhongir MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, who had applied for contesting the assembly elections from Nalgonda, said he was ready to sacrifice his seat if the party decides to field any OBC candidate from the constituency. “If necessary, I shall contest for the MLC elections or Lok Sabha elections later, if there is an efficient OBC candidate for Nalgonda,” he said.

A senior Congress leader familiar with the development said the first list may comprise of 35-40 candidates for those seats where there is not much competition from serious contenders. In other constituencies, after a thorough scrutiny, three names for each seat would be shortlisted and referred to the high command for clearance.

The leader said the party is hoping that some strong candidates from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), who could not make it to the list announced by K Chandrashekar Rao on August 21, are expected to defect to the Congress soon. “Similarly, some contenders from the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] also might jump into the Congress. They are in touch with the PCC leadership. If they switch over to the Congress, they may have to be accommodated in the list in the last moment, though they have not applied for the Congress tickets. The screening committee will take all these issues into consideration before finalising the candidates,” the Congress leader quoted above said.