Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao will on Thursday file his nominations from Gajwel and Kamareddy as the BRS candidate from the two constituencies.
This will be the first time that Chandrashekar Rao will contest from two Assembly constituencies in what has been described by senior BRS leaders as a ‘strategic’ decision by the party.
In the 2014 and in 2018 elections, Chandrashekar Rao contested from Gajwel and won both times defeating Vanteru Pratap Reddy of the Congress who was his nearest rival increasing his winning margin from 19,391 votes in 2014 to 58,290 in the 2018 elections.
The 2023 election is expected to fetch him his seventh win as an MLA with him serving as MLA for six full terms so far in unified Andhra Pradesh, including twice after the formation of Telangana in 2014.
In preparation for filing his nominations, Chandrashekhar Rao visited the Venkateswara temple in Konaipally on November 4, and offered prayers following which he signed his nomination documents.
On Thursday, he will visit Gajwel by helicopter from his farmhouse at Erravalli village, file his nomination, and then proceed to Kamareddy to file his papers from the second constituency that he picked to contest from.
Kamareddy was represented in the outgoing Assembly by BRS leader Gampa Goverdhan who made way for the Chief Minister to contest this time from there.
On Wednesday, Finance Minister T Harish Rao, who inspected the arrangements at Gajwel for the Chief Minister’s Thursday visit, declared: “No matter how many DKs or PKs come to Telangana, they are no match for KCR, our AK-47.”
He was alluding to Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shiva Kumar campaigning for the Congress in the state, and Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena’s entry into Telangana elections.
Harish Rao said the final campaign meeting of the BRS will be held in Gajwel on November 28, just as the party had done during the 2014 and 2018 elections.
“We had victories both times, and we are continuing with that tradition of holding the final meeting in Gajwel. And we are confident that the Chief Minister will win this time from here with a majority of more than one lakh votes,” he said.
The constituency, which had suffered from droughts before Telangana, is now green with water from the Kaleshwaram project and people from across India and other countries come here to study the development model of Gajwel.
People should think whether they want to take a risk by voting for Congress or BJP when they are already in KCR’s safe hands,” he said.
