Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader and former Member of Parliament (MP) Kalvakuntla Kavitha won the Member Legislative Council (MLC) election in Nizamabad on Monday. Her debut win in the state body election was a sweep as she bagged 728 out of 823 polled votes. Kavitha, who is the daughter of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, had served as MP of Nizamabad from 2014 to 2019 before she lost to BJP’s Dharmapuri Arvind in the Lok Sabha polls held last year.
Main opposition Congress and BJP saw a poor performance as local leaders from both parties shifted loyalties to TRS at the last moment. Candidates from both parties lost their deposits with the former getting 29 votes while the latter got 56 votes. Election Commission authorities declared that there were 10 invalid votes. The current seat fell vacant after R Bhupathi Reddy, a former TRS leader, was disqualified after he defected to the Congress ahead of the Assembly elections in 2018
According to TRS sources, Kavitha’s win was clear within the first round of counting as she got 532 out of 600 votes as Subhash Reddy of the Congress and Laxmi Narayana of the BJP were left far behind.
The voters in this election include members of Mandal Praja Parishads (MPTCs), Zilla Praja Parishads (ZPTCs), sarpanches, ward members, municipal councillors and corporators. The Nizamabad local bodies MLC constituency includes voters from both Kamareddy and Nizamabad districts. Second-rung cadres in the party are hoping that pending infrastructural works in both districts will see progress with Kavitha representing them in the government.
Initially, unofficial reports claimed that Kavitha would be nominated for a Rajya Sabha ticket, but the party decided to field her as an MLC instead. Speculations are rife about her possible induction into state cabinet. However, a source in the party opined that her (Kavitha) stint as MLC would be a brief one and things would depend on the equations ahead of the Parliament elections in 2024 .
The MLC election was supposed to be held in March but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.