Barring any unexpected last minute development, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhar Rao is sure to contest both the Assembly and Parliament elections from Gajwel and Medak constituencies respectively.
Mr. Rao had disclosed his plan to party leaders a couple of months ago and there is no change in it till date. He is presently representing Mahabubnagar Parliamentary constituency.
He will also retain his son K.T. Rama Rao for Sircilla Assembly seat but field his daughter Kavitha, a new-comer to electoral politics, from Nizamabad Parliamentary constituency, sources said.
Repeat of 2004By contesting the Assembly and Parliament elections, the TRS president will be repeating what he did in 2004 when he won from Siddipet and Karimnagar constituencies respectively but vacated the former seat and went on to become Union Labour Minister as a member of Parliament.
The TRS had contested elections in alliance with Congress then and joined its governments both at the Centre and State.
In the post-bifurcation scenario this time round, the TRS is reportedly firming up its plans with the premise that there will not be an alliance with the Congress.
Mr. Rao will retain his Assembly seat if the party is in a position to form a government in Telangana but return to Parliament otherwise to play a role in national politics.
Mr. Rao was keen on contesting from Gajwel because it was centrally located in Telangana and his 60-acre agricultural land, where he spent most of the time, was also situated in the constituency.
He obviously chose Medak for contesting the Parliament elections because it was his native district.
It will, however, be interesting if the present Medak MP, Vijayashanti, who was also elected on the TRS ticket in 2009, is fielded by the Congress, the party which she joined a few days ago.
The contest will come full circle if C. Narendranth, the Congress candidate last time, is also given the ticket by BJP since he joined that party.
Sources added that the TRS was in no mood for an alliance with the Congress given the pulls and pressures that might crop up in seat-sharing.
As a party wanting to form an absolute government, alliance was hardly the way forward, they felt.
Moreover, the day-to-day nuisance between alliance partners which the TRS experienced in ample measure when it joined the State government, is still fresh in the minds of its leaders.
Apart from Ms. Kavitha for Nizamabad, the names that are considered to be a “gun shot” in contesting the Parliament polls on TRS ticket are: B. Vinod Kumar (Karimnagar), B. Narsaiah (Bhongir), Kadiam Srihari (Warangal) and A. Sitaram Naik (Mahbubabad). Of course, Congress MPs M. Jagannatham and G. Vivek, who switched over to TRS, will also be fielded and so will the sitting MLAs of the party.
