Amidst tough competition, former minister Eatala Rajender has managed to lobby with the Bharatiya Janata Party national leadership to get the party ticket to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Telangana from Malkajgiri parliamentary constituency.
The party released the first list of candidates for nine out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana.
In all, the BJP finalised candidates for 195 MP seats across the country, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, Amit Shah from Gandhinagar and Purushottam Rupala from Rajkot.
In Telangana, three of the sitting MPs – Bandi Sanjay Kumar from Karimnagar, Dharmapuri Arvind from Nizamabad and G Kishan Reddy from Secunderabad, were retained, while the party picked up new candidates in other seats.
Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MP B B Patil, who resigned from the party and joined the BJP only on Friday, has been given the BJP ticket from his Zaheerabad constituency.
Former MP Konda Vishweshwar Reddy was given the ticket for his own Chevella constituency, while another former MP Bura Narasaiah Goud will contest from his native Bhongir constituency. From Nagarkurnool, the BJP has given ticket to P Bharat, son of outgoing MP P Ramulu.
The significance name in the list, however, is that of Eatala, who did extensive lobbying for the Malkajgiri seat. There was a tough competition from several party leaders like P Muralidhar Rao, Kuna Srisailam Goud, Ch Suresh Reddy, Veerender Goud and educationist M Komaraiah.
But finally, Rajender had the last laugh, because of his clout at the national BJP leadership.
