HYDERABAD: After a long sabbatical, former MP and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter K Kavitha filed her nomination papers for election to Telangana Legislative Council from Nizamabad Local Authorities’ Constituency on Wednesday, which marked a new phase in her political career. "Kavitha’s victory is a foregone conclusion. Of the total 824 votes, the TRS and MIM together have 532 votes," said Roads and Buildings Minister V Prashanth Reddy.
Kavitha, who was elected with a huge margin to Lok Sabha from Nizamabad in 2014, could not retain the seat in 2019 and ceded it to BJP’s Dharmapuri Arvind. Ever since her unexpected defeat, she had remained confined to home. She was rarely seen taking part in party activities. Her visits to Telangana Bhavana were few and far between.
Though Kavitha wanted to go to the Assembly in 2018 elections, her father wanted her to be in the Parliament to raise the voice of TRS in the Lower House. But in the Lok Sabha elections a year later, her fortunes took a nosedive when turmeric farmers upset her applecart for not keeping her promise of ensuring setting up of a turmeric board in the district to get a better price for their produce. Now that Kavitha has gotten a second lease of life, it is expected that she would go on an overdrive, making her presence felt in the Council. It is widely expected that her father is sending her to the Council to take her into his Cabinet at a later date.
According to sources, the Chief Minister, despite wanting Kavitha to be in Delhi, did not send her to Rajya Sabha when the notification was issued for two vacancies since J Santosh Kumar, who happens to be his relative, was already there. If Kavitha is sent to Rajya Sabha, it would give scope for his detractors to campaign against him that he was rewarding his family members unduly.
The sources said it could be one reason why he had preferred former Speaker KR Suresh Reddy to Kavitha for Rajay Sabha along with the incumbent K Keshava Rao. As an MP and a crusader of the Telangana movement, Kavitha has an air of independence about her. She has proved that she is a leader in her own right rather than a daughter who remains in her father’s shadows. Leading Telangana Jagruthi, she had roused the consciousness of Telangana people with the spirit of cultural renaissance for a separate State during the Telangana movement which held her in good stead when she faced the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.