The Telangana Congress party is facing a peculiar situation. The party is yet to recover from the rude jolt it has received during the recent assembly elections and its leaders are completely demoralised.
Even before the party leaders recovered from their shock, the Lok Sabha elections are fast approaching and the state party leadership is compelled to start searching for the right candidates to fight the elections.
The party called for applications to contest the Lok Sabha seats and it received more than 200 applications for 17 Lok Sabha seats after the extended deadline up to February 18.
However, to their shock, most of the applications are from non-serious candidates, who have neither money power nor public image to contest the Lok Sabha polls.
Only for a few seats, some senior party leaders applied for contest but they, too, are not very sure of winning but are confident of putting up a tough fight with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
One such seat is Khammam, where the Congress fared better, winning majority of the MLA seats. For this seat, there is a real tough contest and the party leaders are quarrelling among themselves to get the ticket.
Former Union minister and firebrand Congress leader Renuka Chowdary, PCC working president Jetty Kusuma Kumar, veteran leader V Hanumantha Rao and outgoing MLC Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy are also doing hectic lobbying for the party ticket from Khammam.
Surprisingly, there are virtually no takers for Nizamabad seat, which is represented by TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter Kalvakuntla Kavitha.
The TRS won all the assembly seats under this Parliamentary constituency and so, the chances of Congress wining the LS seat are absolutely nil.
In 2014, then sitting MP Madhu Yashki Goud put up some tough fight against Kavitha, but this time, he is absolutely not interested in the contest at all. He didn’t even apply for the party ticket this time.
The Congress party received only one application for this seat from a non-serious ordinary party worker.
It means Kavitha will have a cake walk in Nizamabad this time, too. The BJP may field Dharmapuri Arvind, son of MP D Srinivas, against her, but he may not give any fight in the elections, analysts said.
