KARIMNAGAR: Unlike the TRS and BJP, the Congress party is planning to field a candidate from the Reddy community in Huzurabad Assembly constituency. According to sources, the grand old party leadership is currently on the hunt for a potential candidate, who will be available for people round-the-clock, for the byelection.
However, the party will finalise a name only after taking into consideration various factors, including past experiences since it has never won the segment after 1978. Sources within the grand old party say that they are unlikely to field an SC candidate in Huzurabad, since they don’t have a solid vote bank in the constituency.
In the meantime, as the pink and saffron parties have already decided to field BC candidates, the Congress leadership is of the opinion that it will be a bad move to nominate another BC leader. Since the Reddy community has about 22,600 voters in the segment, the Congress party is going all out to find a suitable Reddy candidate for the byelection.
Though speculations were rife that former MP Ponnam Prabhakar will be the Congress candidate this time, he refused to contest citing lack of interest. After this, the party high command approached DCC president Kavvampalli Satyanarayana, who belongs to an SC community and is a close associate of TPCC chief A Revanth Reddy. However, he too declined the offer. Now, the party leadership is focused on other possible options.
Meanwhile, sources within the party dropped hints that their leadership is likely to field Kisan Cell district president Patthi Krishna Reddy as candidate for the bypoll. They said that the party will announce the candidate’s name in one to two days.
It may be mentioned here that the Congress is already lagging behind when it comes to campaigns. While both the pink and saffron parties have already deployed senior leaders and are organising campaign programmes on a daily basis, the Congress is yet to kickstart its works. Appointing former deputy CM Damodara Raja Narsimha as the constituency in-charge, and assigning mandal-wise charges to leaders is the only thing that the Congress has done till now.