Sunitha, Raghuveer among four Congress candidates named in Telangana

Hyderabad, March  (IANS) Former Telangana minister and BRS legislator Patnam Mahender Reddy's wife and Vikarabad ZP Chairperson Sunitha Reddy and former minister and senior Congress leader K. Jana Reddy's son Kunduru Raghuveer are among the four candidates announced by Congress on Friday for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Sunitha Reddy will contest from the Chevella constituency while Raghuveer has been fielded from Nalgonda.

Former MPs Suresh Kumar Shetkar and P. Balram Naik have been named as candidates from Zahirabad and Mahbubabad (ST) constituencies, respectively.

Shetkar was elected from Zahirabad in 2009 but lost the 2014 election. Balram Naik was elected from Mahabubabad in 2009 but suffered a defeat in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

The four were among 36 candidates cleared by the Central Election Committee of the Congress.

The party has kept three seats on hold, including Mahabubnagar in Telangana. Challa Vamshi Chand Reddy is the proposed Congress candidate. His name was announced by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy last month.

Vamshi Chand Reddy had finished third in Mahabubnagar in the 2019 election.

Of the four seats for which Congress announced its candidates on Friday, the party had won only Nalgonda in 2019. N. Uttam Kumar Reddy was elected from here. He was elected to the Assembly in the recent elections and has been inducted into the state Cabinet.

Out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state, the Congress had bagged three in 2019 polls. The BRS had won nine seats while the BJP secured four seats. The AIMIM had retained Hyderabad.

The BRS, which lost power to Congress in the state, recently lost three sitting MPs. While two MPs joined the BJP, one defected to Congress.

The decision of Congress to field Sunitha Reddy from Chevella has given hope to other BRS leaders who recently joined Congress and are aspiring for tickets in Lok Sabha polls.

On February 8, Mahender Reddy and Sunitha met Chief Minister Revanth Reddy. Mahender Reddy was made minister by then Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in August last year, just three months before the Assembly elections. His induction was an attempt by the BRS to pacify him as he was expecting a party ticket to contest the coming Assembly elections from the Tandur constituency.