Both parties fail to allot seats to backward class leaders
Pic for representation purpose - (Photo- DC archives)
Warangal: The dominant BC groups, with the largest vote share, have been left red-faced by the BJP-TD poll pact as neither party has allotted a single seat to a BC leader to contest the Assembly polls in Warangal.
BC community leaders were upset after the final lists of both the BJP and the TD were announced on Wednesday, the last day of nominations. Both the parties had earlier vowed to make a BC as their prime ministerial and chief ministerial candidate respectively.
Out of seven Assembly seats in Warangal covering Palakurthy, Narsempet, Parkal, Warangal East, Warangal West, Jangaon and Bhupalpally, the BJP and TD are contesting from four and three seats respectively.
From the BJP, the four non-BC leaders to get tickets are Rao Padma Amarender Reddy (Warangal East), M. Dharma Rao (Warangal West), Kommuri Pratap Reddy (Jangaon) and Gandra Satyanarayana Rao (Bhupalpally).
Incidentally, Mr Satyanarayana Rao was the Bhupalpally constituency TD in-charge till Tuesday but switched over to the BJP on Wednesday and returned with a B-form.
The TD’s three contestants are Challa Dharma Reddy (Parkal), Revuri Prakash Reddy (Narse-mpet) and Errabelli Dayakar Rao (Palakurthy), whose name was kept in suspense by the party till the last day of filing nominations.
“It is now clearly proven that the BJP and the TD are upper caste dominated political parties with no intention of encouraging BCs. In a strategic manner, they used the bogey of alliance to sidetrack us,” said Prof. K. Murali Manohar, founder of Mahatma Jotirao Phule Academy of Backward Castes Development and Emp-owerment (ABCDE), who had pressed for a sub-plan at an all-party conference in the city last year.
Meanwhile, the BC intellectuals like president of Kakatiya University BC Teachers’ Association (KUBTA), Prof. M. Ashok Kumar, blamed the state Backward Class (BC) Welfare Association president R. Krishnaiah, who is being projected as TD’s Telangana CM candidate, for the sorry state of affairs.
“He was better off as a BC leader before he took the decision to join the TD,” said Prof. Ashok Kumar.
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