Congress relieved as rebels in Telangana withdraw nominations

Hyderabad: Congress in Telangana heaved a sigh of relief with almost all the rebel candidates having withdrawn their nominations.

Sensing trouble in at least 24 Assembly segments where party ticket aspirants had filed nominations, Congress had appointed a committee with representatives from the central leadership to hold a parley with them.

Of the 24 segments, Congress state leadership felt these rebels might potentially damage party prospects in at least 12 places. With the intervention of the party committee except one, the remaining 11 candidates withdrew their nominations.

Congress formed a committee to negotiate with the dissatisfied leaders. AICC Telangana affairs in-charge Manikrao Thackeray, senior leader K Jana Reddy, Deepadas Munshi, and Meenakshi Natarajan are part of the committee. TPCC senior vice-president Mallu Ravi and AICC secretary Rohit Chaudhary have also played a key role in rebel leaders' nominations withdrawal.

Patel Ramesh Reddy from Suryapet constituency, Gangaram Soudagar from Zahirabad, Nagi Shekar from Karimnagar, Daida Ravinder from Bhongir, Gudipati Narsaiah from Thungathurthy, Batta Vijay Gandhi from Pinapaka, Dharavath Rammurthy Naik from Wyra, Solthi Kiran from Parkal, Janga Raghava Reddy from Warangal West, Kasula Balaraju from Banswad, C Parijatha Narsimha Reddy from Maheshwaram had withdrawn their nominations.

Dramatic scenes were witnessed in Suryapet on Wednesday as Mallu Ravi and Rohit Choudhary visited Ramesh Reddy to persuade him. While a few of Reddy's followers had protested shouting slogans against the party state leadership, his family members were seen weeping inconsolably. Later, he agreed to withdraw from the fray after he was assured a ticket to contest from one of the Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 General Elections.

The ruling BRS was able to quell any kind of rebellion and prevented the disgruntled leaders from filing nominations as the candidates' list was announced in August ahead of all the parties. Barring a few, BRS supremo K Chandrashekar Rao renominated almost all the sitting MLAs without giving much scope for rebellion.

2,290 in fray

In total, around 608 candidates had withdrawn their nominations. After the withdrawals, as many as 2,290 candidates are in the fray for the November 30 polls for 119 seats of the Telangana Assembly.

As the deadline to withdraw nominations was on Wednesday, poll authorities on Thursday announced the number of candidates in the fray. The highest number of contestants in the state are in the L B Nagar segment (48), followed by Gajwel (44), Kamareddy (39), Munugode (39), Palair (37), Nampally (34), Kodad (34), Malkajgiri (33), Uppal (32), Khammam (32), Serilingampally (31), Musheerabad (31), Nalgonda (31), and Kothagudem (30). The lowest number of contestants are in Narayanpet (7), Banswada (7), Balkonda (8), Cantonment (10), Manakonduru (10), and Boath (10).

Interestingly, Gajwel and Kamareddy, from where BRS Supremo K Chandrashekar Rao is in the fray also had the highest number of contestants.

As per the final list of the electoral rolls announced on Thursday, there are 3.26 crore voters in Telangana. The number of young voters between 18-19 age stands at 9,99,667, which is around 3.06 per cent of the total.