WARANGAL: The demand to replace Ghanpur (Station) MLA T Rajaiah, who has been allowed to contest the upcoming Assembly elections from the same constituency, is getting louder every passing day. On Saturday, over 5000 Telangana Rashtra Samithi activists from the constituency gathered at Circuit House in Hanamkonda, where deputy chief minister Kadiyam Srihari, Warangal West MLA D Vinay Bhaskar and other senior leaders were in a meeting, and demanded that Rajaiah be replaced by Srihari instead.
The protestors said that both party workers and the people did not want Rajaiah as their MLA and said that he did not have their best interests in mind. Leaders of the group said that there had been a lot of resentment among the cadres ever since Rajaiah got renominated. Srihari, in an attempt to pacify the protestors, said that the candidate had been finalised by the party chief K Chandrasekhar Rao and it was their duty to honour it. “We have to respect his decision,” he was heard saying.
It may be recalled that Srihari, now an MLC, had earlier represented Ghanpur (Station) in the Assembly as a Telugu Desam Party candidate. Between 2014 and 2015, he represented Warangal in the Parliament, before he resigned at took up a ministerial position in the Telangana government. A few weeks ago, during the candidates’ finalisation, it was reported that Srihari had wanted the Ghanpur ticket for his daughter Kavya.