Hyderabad: The YSRC has named 20 candidates including veteran film actors Giri Babu, T.S. Vijay Chander and balladeer Vangapandu Usha, Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy’s cousin Y.S. Anil Reddy, late NTR’s wife Lakshmi Parvati and other senior leaders as its star campaigners.
The BJP’s star campaigners’ list of 40 for both Telangana and Seemandhra include actors Nagarjuna, Shivaji, Shivaji Raja, Kota Sreenivasa Rao, Jeevita and Rajasekhar apart from Ms Purandeswari.
The party’s senior national leaders L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj and Venkaiah Naidu are also in the list.
The Telugu Desam has named 33 leaders as its star campaigners including Mr Naidu, his son Nara Lokesh, film actors N. Balakrishna, Ali, Venumadhav and N. Harikrishna. Mr Naidu’s key aides, C.M. Ramesh and Y. Sujana Chowdary.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s star list does not have any known local names but features Arvind Kejriwal, Kumar Viswas, Manish Sisodia, Prasanth Bhushan, Medha Patekar and others. As per the Representation of People Act, the travel expenses of star campaigners of political parties are exempted and expenses incurred by a star campaigner towards the use of helicopters will not be added to the candidate’s account. While candidates have a ceiling on campaign expenditure, political parties as a whole do not have any such ceiling.
However any expenditure incurred by a political party which promotes the prospects of a particular candidate shall be accounted for by such candidate and the responsibility lies with the candidate to prove that the expenditure incurred is not to be accounted to him/her and be treated as that for general party propaganda.
