TRS leaders sweat about seats for ’19
TRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s recent announcement that candidates of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) for the next elections will be announced next month has generated political heat within the party and tension among the aspirants.
Mr Rao said that barring four to five seats, all sitting MLAs would be retained. With this, TRS ticket aspirants who lost in 2014 are upset that they would not get tickets as the sitting MLAs from defected parties would be given another chance.
Besides, some sitting MLAs facing severe antiincumbency as per the surveys ordered by the Chief Minister are now heaving a sigh of relief with his assurance.
But these negative survey results had rekindled hopes of other TRS leaders in these constituencies that they may be preferred over the sitting MLAs. But their hopes have also been dashed.
Some disgruntled TRS leaders are also looking at other parties for tickets.
The situation is complicated in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts, where MLAs from the TD have defected to the TRS.
Besides, there is tough competition for all seats in the TRS with three to four candidates vying for tickets for each seat. In the erstwhile Ranga Reddy district, the TRS could win only four seats in 2014. Subsequently, six MLAs from the TD and one from the Congress have defected to the TRS.
TRS Chevella candidate K.S. Ratnam lost to Congress MLA Kale Yadaiah with a thin margin. Mr Yadaiah has now defected to the TRS.
Mr Ratnam has already been campaigning a lot with the hope that he would get a ticket.
Mr Ratnam has been worried over losing the ticket to Yadaiah.
Other TRS candidates such as Kancharla Chandrasekhar Reddy (Ibrahimpatnam), Kotha Manohar Reddy (Maheshwaram), Kolanu Hanmanth Reddy (Qutbullapur), G. Padma Rao (Kukatpally), Swarnalatha Bheemarjun Reddy (Rajendranagar) and K. Shankar Goud (Sherilingampally), who lost in 2014 but were continuing in the TRS with the hope of getting a ticket for the 2019 elections, also share the same fate.
However, in all the seats, TD MLAs have defected to TRS making their ticket chances remote leading to resentment.
After the TRS came to power in 2014, all these candidates had pinned their hopes that the party would nominate them for some posts but this too did not happen. Now they are upset that they face the risk of losing tickets to contest.
In Nalgonda district, Congress Lok Sabha member Gutha Sukhender Reddy, Miryalaguda MLA Bhaskar Rao, CPI’s Deverakonda MLA Ravindra Naik have defected to the TRS. Most of the TRS candidates are worried that they would lose their tickets to these defected leaders.