WARANGAL: The TRS and the Congress have announced their candidates for the by-elections to be held for the Warangal MLC seat under the local authority constituency. While the TRS named Pochampally Srinivas Reddy as its candidate, the Congress chose Parkal constituency in-charge Engala Venkatrami Reddy to contest the polls.
It was earlier believed that the Congress had fav-oured Mr Konda Muralidhar Rao or Ms Konda Surekha. It is learnt that they rejected the offer. Mr Muralidhar Rao was elected to the seat unanimously in December 2015 while he was a member of the TRS.
He resigned from the Council while defecting from the TRS to the Congress before the Assembly elections, necessitating the byelection. However, internal bickering is a cause of worry for the Congress candidate.
Mr Venkatrami Reddy needs to bring together his party leaders to be able to stand a chance of winning the election.
On the other hand, the TRS favouring Mr Srin-ivas Reddy is not going down well with party seniors. Several seniors were aspiring for the ticket, including state secretary Takkalapally Ravinder Rao, Kanneboina Rajaiah Yadav, Nagurla Venkate-shwarlu among others. Mr Ravinder Rao, who aspired for the Palakurthy ticket during the last Assembly elections, was assured of the ticket after the TRS decided to field Mr Errabelli Dayakar Rao. However, he was left high and dry once again.
On Monday, two sets of nomination papers on behalf of Mr Srinivas Reddy were filed with returning officer S. Dayanand. He is likely to file his third set of papers along with the party B Form on Tuesday, the last day for filing nominations. Mr Reddy is also expected to submit his nomination on Tuesday.
The nominations will be scrutinised on May 15, and the last date for withdrawal is May 17. Polling will be held on May 31 and the counting of vots will take place on June 3.
