The incumbent BRS MLA from Malkajgiri, Mynampally Hanumanth Rao, who has already been announced as the party candidate to contest the election from the same constituency again in the upcoming Assembly elections, is reportedly in talks with the Congress days after he expressed disappointment that his son Rohit Reddy was not given a ticket to run from Medak.
Hanumanth Rao had on August 21 criticised Telangana Finance Minister Harish Rao hours before BRS supremo and Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) announced the party’s 114 candidates for 115 of the 119 constituencies for the upcoming elections. Hanumanth Rao gave an ultimatum to the party that he would not contest unless his son Rohit was also given a ticket from Medak.
However, KCR chose to allot the Medak ticket to sitting MLA Padma Devender Reddy. Subsequently, Hanumanth Rao, upset with the BRS leadership, had said that he would decide his future course of action in a week.
A senior Congress leader from Hyderabad said that Hanumanth Rao is in talks for two tickets for himself and his son. “Things have been discussed with him already and talks are still ongoing. But he is looking to leave the BRS,” he told TNM.
The BRS is, however, in no mood to entertain Hanumanth Rao. A senior BRS leader said that there’s no way that the Medak seat will be given to the unhappy MLA’s son. “It is held by one of our few women MLAs who is still strong there. He can’t do whatever he pleases,” the leader added.
Apart from Hanumanth Rao, other leaders whose names were not in the candidate list have also expressed their dissatisfaction. Ex-minister Tummala Nageshwar Rao is one among them. Similarly, Khanapur MLA Rekha Nayak also applied for a Congress ticket a day after KCR’s list did not include her renomination. The BRS changed the names of nine sitting MLAs in its list of 114 candidates.
The state elections are slated to be held in December. In the previous 2018 polls, the BRS won 88 seats while the Congress and Telugu Desam Party, which formed a grand alliance with other organisations, managed to only win 19 and 2 seats respectively.
The Bharatiya Janata Party won only one seat while the All India Majllis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen retained its 7 seats in Hyderabad. However within a year of the election, 12 Congress MLAs and both the TDP MLAs defected to the BRS. Since it was over two-thirds of elected members from the grand old party who left, the anti-defection law did not kick in.