HYDERABAD: Congress president Sonia Gandhi has approved the candidature of Kunduru Jana Reddy for Nagarjunasagar byelection on Tuesday. Jana Reddy, the former Home Minister of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, was elected as an MLA for seven times since 1983.
The Congress, which is facing an ‘existential crisis’, is desperately looking for a victory in the Nagarjunasagar byelection, to assert its presence. Though Jana Reddy wanted a party nomination for his son for a long time, the party did not want to take any chances. The Congress leader, who lost to Nomula Narasimhaiah in the 2018 Assembly elections, seems to have woken up from his political hibernation and has been spending quality time with his constituents, utilising the Graduates’ MLC election campaign as a precursor to his bypoll campaign.
Moreover, he has been staying relevant with his jibes on Mission Bhagiratha and other schemes.The Congress may not want to commit the mistake of deploying all its leaders in one constituency. It had positioned State-level leaders in the its campaign for Dubbaka byelection. It assigned each village in the segment to a top leader. However, none of these efforts had helped the party win the Dubbaka byelection, which went into the BJP’s kitty.Ever since it lost the 2018 Assembly elections, the Congress was defeated in two byelections.