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RS polls: Congress to lose representation in Telugu states, TDP strength to come down to 1
The notification for Rajya Sabha elections will be issued on March 6 and the last date for filing of nominations is March 13. Polling, if necessary, will be held on March 26.
The Congress is all set to lose its representation in the Rajya Sabha from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and the Telugu Desam Party will end up with just one seat in the Upper House in April.
The Election Commission of India on Tuesday announced the schedule for the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha for the seats that are going to fall vacant in April. Elections will be held for four RS seats in Andhra Pradesh and two in Telangana.
The notification will be issued on March 6 and the last date for filing of nominations is March 13. Polling, if necessary, will be held on March 26.
The Congress at present has three Rajya Sabha members from these two Telugu states – MA Khan and T Subbarami Reddy from Andhra Pradesh and KVP Ramachandra Rao from Telangana.
All of them are going to retire in April and their party will lose all the three seats in the elections to the Upper House, as it has no representation in Andhra assembly and just six seats in the Telangana House.
Similarly, the Telugu Desam Party had six seats in the Rajya Sabha till last year. Of them, three MPs from Andhra Pradesh – YS Chowdary, CM Ramesh and TG Venkatesh and one MP from Telangana, Garikapati Mohan Rao, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party en bloc.
The TDP is left with just two seats in the Upper House – Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar and Thota Sita Ramalakshmi. Of them, Ramalakshmi is going to retire in April and the party has no strength in the assembly to get another candidate in her place.
Apart from the three defectors from the TDP, the BJP has one MP seat in Andhra Pradesh—former Union minister Suresh Prabhu. In Telangana, though it has Garikapati Mohan Rao who defected from the TDP, he is going to retire now and the party has no strength to win the seat again.
Going by the strength of the parties, the ruling YSR Congress party, which has 151 members in the 175-member Andhra Pradesh assembly, will walk away with all the four Rajya Sabha seats.
In Telangana, ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi, which has 104 out in 119-member assembly, will win both the RS seats that are going to fall vacant.
The YSRC which has two members in RS at present, V Vijay Sai Reddy and Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy, and will increase its tally to six and the strength of the TRS will go up from five to seven.
A senior TRS leader, who requested anonymity, said party president K Chandrasekhar Rao is contemplating nominating his daughter Kalvakunta Kavitha to the Rajya Sabha this time.
Kavitha, who represented Nizamabad parliamentary constituency between 2014 and 2019, lost the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 to BJP candidate Dharmapuri Aravind.
“She has been keeping a low profile since then but KCR wants her to play an active role at the national level at a time when he is planning to revive the concept of the federal front by next elections,” the party leader said.
