After facing a humiliating defeat in the assembly elections held on December 7, the Congress party in Telangana has virtually no takers for its party tickets from senior leaders for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Though the party has received as many as 380 applications for 17 Lok Sabha seats, majority of them are non-serious candidates who have neither money power nor any identity among the people.
But seniors who had won several elections in the past, too, are not evincing interest in contesting the Lok Sabha elections. A couple of them want to shift to safer seats, where the party has some chances of winning.
The reason is obvious: they are apprehensive that they would definitely lose the elections, which would be another big setback for them.
Secondly, they do not have enough resources to fight the elections on par with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi which fancies great chances.
So, even those who evinced interest in contesting the Lok Sabha polls, are now dropping out.
For example, veteran Congress leader and former Union minister S Jaipal Reddy, who had earlier announced that he would contest the Lok Sabha elections from Mahbubnagar parliamentary constituency, has now dropped out. Apparently, he has realised that it would be a futile exercise.
Another senior leader T Jeevan Reddy, who recently lost from Jagitial constituency, had earlier announced that he would contest from Karimnagar. Now, he too, is not interested. He wants to contest the MLC elections under graduates’ constituency.
Former MP Madhu Yashki Goud, who won from Nizamabad twice and lost to TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter Kalvakuntla Kavitha in 2014, is also refusing to contest from the same constituency this time as he knows he will be defeated certainly.
He has applied for the party ticket from Bhongir constituency on the ground that it has large number of Gowda votes. But other Congress leaders are opposing his request.
Even PCC working president A Revanth Reddy, who lost from Kodangal assembly constituency in the last assembly elections, also wants to shift to Bhongir, though he initially evinced interest in Mahbubnagar seat.
