There is still more than two years to go for the assembly elections in Telangana, but Y S Sharmila, president of newly-founded YSR Telangana Party, seems to have already got into the election mode.
Even as the major parties like the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress are focussing on the by-election to Huzurabad assembly seat, Sharmila has started announcing the candidates of her party in the next assembly elections in the state.
Addressing “Dalit Bheri” meeting at the market centre in Tirumalagiri town in Suryapet district, Sharmila came up with a surprising announcement of the candidature of popular folk singer Epuri Somanna on behalf of her party in the next assembly elections from Tungaturthi assembly constituency.
She said Somanna, a young Dalit activist, had played a major role in the movement for separate Telangana state and within six months after the formation of Telangana, he had been exposing the corrupt rule of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
“Somanna is the real fighter for Telangana and he will be our party candidate from Tunagaturthi constituency. I request the people of the constituency to bless him in the next elections,” she said.
It is not clear whether the announcement of Somanna as the YSRTP candidate from Tungaturthi was just a one-time affair or Sharmila will continue to do that in other constituencies as well.
There are reports that she may make similar announcement of her party candidates whenever she holds a public meeting as part of her padayatra, likely to commence in the second week of October.
Apparently, Sharmila has come up with this strategy of announcing the party candidates in the next elections to attract, well in advance, disgruntled leaders from other parties, who might be thinking of waiting till the last moment before the elections before jumping into her party.
Secondly, it would give her a lot of time at the time of elections. When the other parties would be busy deciding on the candidates, Sharmila can straightaway launch the campaign.
Thirdly, it would also give a lot of time for the party candidates to mobilise their resources, besides being in the people to win their confidence.
Interestingly, Sharmila, who had hitherto been focussing only on the unemployment issue and holding 12-hour hunger strikes in every district to attract the youth, has now shifted her attention to other sections of the society.
The Dalit Bheri meeting at Tirumalagiri is one such attempt to attract the SCs, who were one of the biggest beneficiaries of the welfare schemes during her father late Y S Rajasekhar Reddy’s regime.
She has already taken up the cause of tribals in Khammam by supporting their podu cultivation issue.
