After the initial hesitation over entering the fray of Rajya Sabha elections, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) leadership finally made up his its mind on Sunday and announced party’s secretary general K. Keshava Rao as its candidate.
After announcing Mr. Keshava Rao’s candidature, party president K. Chandrasekhar Rao stated that he would file his nomination papers either on Monday or Tuesday. The latter was learnt to have consulted the leaderships of Congress, CPI, BJP and MIM seeking their MLAs’ support to TRS’ candidate. Sources in the TRS said the party was making a calculated move following confusion and bickering arising out of the State’s bifurcation issue in the Congress camp. The TRS is of the hope that Mr. Keshava Rao would get support of some Congress MLAs’ from Telangana since he was associated with the ruling party all along till he switched over to TRS.
Besides, the TRS is also stated to be banking on the support of a few TDP MLAs from Telangana who were “in touch” with it. The TRS has a strength of 17 MLAs in the Assembly now but it has come down effectively to 16 after Mancherial MLA G. Aravind Reddy revealed plans to join the Congress. Apart from its own legislators, it has the support of other two pro-Telangana parties, BJP and CPI which have 4 members each.
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