Hyderabad: With the Election Commission gearing up to announce poll schedule for the three Rajya Sabha seats from Telangana state within a week from now, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is keeping everything close to himself, leaving party leaders to speculate for themselves.
This is the last biennial polls for the Rajya Sabha to be held from the state before the 2019 general elections to the Assembly. Owing to defections of legislators from other parties, the ruling TRS is planning to bag all the three seats that will be vacated as the six-year term of C.M. Ramesh (Telugu Desam), Rapolu Anand Bhaskar and late Palvai Govardhan Reddy (Congress) expires.
Out of the 119 elected MLAs in the TS Assembly, the TRS has 90 MLAs, with seven more MLAs from All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) backing it. However, the CM has not started the exercise of selecting the candida-tes but he made an anno-uncement that this time, he would send one lea-der from Golla Kuru-ma/Yadava community to the Rajya Sabha.
Karimnagar zilla pari-shad chairperson Tula Uma, Meat and Poultry Corporation chairman S. Rajaiah Yadav and former CPM leader and TRS unsuccessful candidate from Nagarjunas-agar Assembly Nomula Narasimhaiah Yadav appear to be the contenders for the post.
For the remaining two seats, it is believed that the CM would like to se-nd one from the forward caste Velama, especially his relatives. In the earlier biennial polls, Mr Rao did not nominate anyone from his personal quota.
Keeping this in mind, speculations are rife that Divikonda Damod-ar Rao, a chartered accountant or TRS general-secretary Joginapally Santosh Kumar, a close relative of Mr Rao have chances.
A key leader in the TRS believes that as there is alleged involvement of Mr Damodar Rao in the Miyapur land scam, that surfaced in 2017, the CM might not consider him as a candidate though he promised to send him to the RS this year.
Santosh Kumar is the son of Chief Minister’s wife Sobha’s sister and has been managing the party sponsored publications and news channel. With regard to other seats, talks are that it might go to a minority leader or a Backward class leader.
