The Congress central leadership has decided to announce the list of candidates for Assembly and Lok Sabha in Telangana region on April 4 or 5.
AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh told reporters after a meeting of the Congress Central Election Committee chaired by AICC president Sonia Gandhi at 10 Janpath and attended by the TPCC president Ponnala Lakshmaiah and working president N.Uttam Kumar Reddy and former Deputy Chief Minister C.Damodar Raj Narasimha in Delhi that most of the names have been cleared. “Some of the seats have been kept pending. The announcement will be either on April 4 or 5. Screening for seats in Andhra Pradesh will be taken up on April 2 and 3. The list may be announced on April 6 and 7,” he said. The AICC leader said today was the last meeting for finalising the tickets for Telangana constituencies.
Although, the leadership has arrived at broad consensus on the seats, which are not problematic, it was decided against announcing the list considering that Tuesday was not an auspicious day. “They felt that Tuesday being Amavasya day, it will not be right to release the first list,” a senior Telangana Congress leader remarked. But, yet another senior leader maintained that the party decided against releasing the names keeping in view the ZPTC and MPTC elections slated for April 6. “The party obviously did not want to take chances of displeasing some legislators, who may not get the ticket. This would have adverse impact on the fortunes of the Congress candidates in the panchayat raj elections,” sources said.
Last week, the screening committee of the party had reportedly cleared names of about 40 sitting members and 15 other seniors leaders, who had lost the last Assembly elections. A TPCC functionary said that Ms. Gandhi closely examined the list of candidates armed with the survey reports, internal feedback about the sitting members and also the intelligence bureau inputs. Of the 53 sitting MLAs, close to three dozen MLAs may find their names cleared for contesting the elections, sources remarked.
On the alliance with CPI, he said discussions are on. “In principle, we agreed, the talks on,” he said. Sources said the Congress party has agreed in principle to allot one Lok Sabha and eight Assembly seats to the CPI. The Left party wants the Bellampally, Wyra, Kothagudem and Munugode seats, which it represents apart from four others. The stalemate is over Husnabad, Devarakonda and Munugode Assembly seats demanded by the CPI.
While Husnabad and Devarakonda are represented by Congress MLAs, Munugode is held by the CPI. Congress is said to have asked the CPI to choose other segments in Khammam and Warangal parliamentary constituencies.
It is understood that sitting MPs from Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Warangal, Mahabubabad, Zaheerabad, Secunderabad, Bhongir, Nalgonda and Peddapalli may be announced tonight.
