Hyderabad: Surprising most, the BJP picked the former Congress leader T. Jayaprakash Reddy as it’s candidate for the upcoming Medak Lopk Sabha polls Though the ruling TRS and main Opposi-tion Congress had named their candidates on Tuesday, the BJP waited till Wednesday morning, the last day for filing papers, and announced Mr Jaggareddy as its candidate.
Mr Jaggareddy announced his resignation from the Congress a few minutes before he was “formally” admitted in the BJP on Wednesday and given the B form to contest. He had in fact started his political innings with ABVP and moved to the BJP and became municipal chairman of Sangareddy. In 2004, he switched sides with late A. Narendra and joined the TRS and became MLA from Sangareddy. However during late Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy’s regime, he, along with nine other TRS MLAs, started “associating” with the Congress party and rebelled against KCR.
In the 2009 elections, Mr Jaggareddy contested as a Congress candidate and won from Sangareddy. He, however, lost in the 2014 Assembly elections. Known as the “Sangareddy strongman” Mr Jaggareddy has a huge contingent of dedicated followers and is a strong opponent of KCR. He was also responsible for Ms Vijayashanthi to switch sides to the Congress from the TRS.
Moreover, he enjoys a good rapport with actor Pawan Kalyan who had publicly showered praises on him. Unconfirmed reports suggests that Pawan Kalyan had also recommended the candidature of Mr Jaggareddy to take on the TRS in the by-poll and had reportedly promised to campaign for him. This, however, has been strongly denied by the state BJP leadership who said that there were some genuine reasons behind picking Mr Jaggareddy as the party’s candidate.
