Congress in ‘demand’ in Seemandhra, feels state Congress leaders

Hyderabad: AP Campaign Committee leaders were surprised and even shocked at the overwhelming response from party leaders seeking tickets to contest in the upcoming Assembly elections.

The APCC has received more than 1,000 applications for 175 Assembly constituencies. Senior Congress leaders, who had left the party, had predicted that nobody from the party would come forward to contest the next Assembly elections, and those who do would lose their deposits.

After the state was divided, the then Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, several ministers and MLAs had dumped the Congress believing that the party would be voted out of power by voters angry at the decision to divide the state. As many as 66 Seemandhra Congress MLAs left the party and joined other parties.

To stem the flow of desertions and build confidence in the party, APCC president N. Raghuveera Reddy, APCC chairman K. Chiranjeevi and other senior leaders went on a bus yatra across the Seemandhra districts. They were pleasantly surprised to find that there was confidence among the party among cadre and workers in Seemandhra despite defections.

This was further confirmed by the flood of applications seeking party tickets to contest in the next Assembly elections. Mr Raghuveera Reddy told this newspaper that in his own district of Anantapur, at present, 109 applications for 14 Assembly constituencies had been received and 16 applications for two Lok Sabha constituencies.

APCC leaders are now busy processing the applications. They are also collecting data from 1999 onwards to find out how many applications were received in every Assembly election from the Seemandhra region.

Hundreds of party leaders and workers, including INTUC leaders, came to Indira Bhavan on Saturday seeking party tickets for the Assembly elections.

Mr Raghuveera Reddy said that “winning or losing in the elections was not the criterion. After senior leaders left the party, second line leaders have emerged in all the districts of AP.”

He said that the party cadre in Seemandhra had proved that nobody could destroy the Congress. In fact, this was a good opportunity to reorganise the Congress by encouraging new leadership in the Seemandhra region, he added.