Telangana Elections

Telangana elections: How will the Grand Alliance deal with friendly contests?

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HYDERABAD: As TJS candidates have filed nominations in around 10 constituencies, against their allotted eight, and TDP and TJS candidates are pitted against each other in two segments, ‘friendly contests’ are expected to spoil the Grand Alliance’s chances of pulling off a win in the upcoming polls.
To avoid a division of votes between the parties, and give TRS an advantage, top leaders of all four parties were seen huddling up to come to an agreement.

“While Congress allotted us 8 seats, as part of the seat-sharing pact, there was clarity on only 6 seats. Therefore, we have filed nominations from 14 seats. We are ready to withdraw nominations from some seats, if Congress and TDP candidates withdraw from seats of our choice,” said TJS official representative Yogeshwar Reddy.

Even the Congress has not kept things simple — it was supposed to file nominations for 94 seats, however, its leaders went ahead and filed their papers from 100 constituencies. On the other hand, TDP has filed nominations in just 13, while it was given 14 seats.  

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