Alliance candidate to take on K Chandrasekhar Rao in Gajwel

Hyderabad: With the grand alliance pitting a common candidate against him, attention is turning to how caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will perform in his Gajwel seat. In the eight elections from 1983, Gajwel has never repeated its legislator in straight elections.

Only Dr J Geetha Reddy from the Congress and the TD’s B. Sanjeeva Rao have won twice from Gajwel but not in consecutive elections. In 2014, Mr Rao won Gajwel with 19,391 votes against the TD’s Vanteru Pratap Reddy who is now being fielded by the Congress. The TRS polled 86,694 votes while the TD got 67,303 votes and the Congress 34,085, which totals about 1 lakh votes. These two parties are on the same side now.

Mr T. Narsa Reddy, the 2014 Congress candidate, has joined the TRS. While the Congress, TD, CPI and the TJS are coming together, the Chief Minister in the last four years has changed the face of Gajwel by spending crores of rupees and taking up development works. The TRS is confident that Mr Rao will get a bigger margin, though some TRS local leaders have switched over to the Congress. There is another sentiment attached to Gajwel. In the last eight elections, the party that won Gajwel also formed government in the state. The TD did this four times, the Congress in 1989, 2004 and 2009 and the TRS in 2014.