The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Dissident activity takes a backseat

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Friday, May 16, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Dissident activity takes a backseat

S. Harpal Singh

ADILABAD: Leaders of all political parties seem to have veered round to the view that dissidence is not worth the trouble, as their political future is tied up with the outcome of the May 29 byelection in Adilabad Lok Sabha constituency.

“United we stand” slogan has, therefore, become the refrain of leaders and workers who want to ensure the victory of their respective candidates in the triangular contest involving the Congress, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS).

Candidates and workers of all political parties are not likely to be put to discomfiture by the extremely hot weather.

However, they would be put to embarrassment when voters grill them on burning issues like price rise and shortage of drinking water.

Had political compulsions not made them estranged bedfellows, the three main contestants in the byelection to the Adilabad Lok Sabha constituency would have been under one roof. The Congress’s A. Indrakaran Reddy, TRS’s T. Madhusudhan Reddy and TDP’s S. Venugopalachary were colleagues in the TDP when they began their political career in the early 1980s. Mr Indrakaran Reddy, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from this seat in 1991 on a TDP ticket, quit the party to join the Congress during the Prime Ministership of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Madhusudhan Reddy, who was Adilabad Zilla Parishad Chairman in the mid-1980s had quit TDP before the 2004 elections. For the TDP candidate, this is the fifth consecutive nomination, after he was elected Nirmal MLA for the first time in 1983. He also won the two subsequent elections before he was fielded by the party for the Lok Sabha seat which he wrested three times in a row. He looked invincible till the TRS phenomenon burst the myth.

In the last 2004 elections, Mr. Venugopalachary was defeated by the Congress-backed Madhusudhan Reddy who came riding the Telangana wave. On paper, the Congress candidate, who is the MLA of Nirmal segment, seems stronger with four of the seven MLAs in the Parliamentary constituency backing him. They are Adilabad Assembly segment’s C. Ramchander Reddy and Sirpur’s Koneru Konappa, both of the Congress, and TRS rebels Narayan Rao Patel of Mudhole and Soyam Bapu Rao of Boath. But it remains to be seen how the new voters will vote, as 61,821 new voters have been added during the last four years taking the total electorate to 11,91,768.

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