Senior YSR Congress party leader and former Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) trust board chairman Y V Subba Reddy, at last, is going to get what he had been asking for – a nomination to Rajya Sabha.
According to sources, party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy is understood to have finalised the name of Subba Reddy, along with that of two others, for the Rajya Sabha elections scheduled to be held in March this year.
The Election Commission of India is expected to issue notification for the biennial elections to three Rajya Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh in the first week of February, before announcing the schedule for Lok Sabha and state assembly elections.
The three seats that are going to fall vacant are that of sitting MPs – Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy (YSRCP), Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar (TDP) and C M Ramesh (BJP).
According to party sources, apart from Subba Reddy, the party president has finalised the names of Golla Babu Rao, sitting MLA from Payakaraopet and Jangalapalli Srinivasulu alias Arani Srinivasulu, sitting MLA from Chittoor.
Both these MLAs have been denied tickets for the upcoming assembly elections, based on the survey reports which indicated that they might lose their seats. But Jagan has promised them Rajya Sabha tickets to compensate for the denial of MLA tickets.
While Subba Reddy is from forward caste, Golla Babu Rao is a Scheduled Caste leader and Arani Srinivasulu is a Balija.
Subba Reddy had been asking for Rajya Sabha ticket for the last four years, but Jagan has been denying him the same and made him TTD chairman twice. Now that he has stepped down from the TTD post, he has been asking the Rajya Sabha seat.
Gong by the strength of the YSRCP, it can win all the three seats without much effort. However, the party is apprehensive that around 30 MLAs who have been denied the party tickets for the upcoming elections might revolt against the party and might not vote for the official party candidates in the Rajya Sabha elections.
Since they would anyway be losing their assembly membership, they are not afraid of the party whip. In that event, it would be difficult for the YSRCP to win a third Rajya Sabha seat. It remains to be seen how Jagan tackles this issue.
