All parties favour defectors

Hyderabad: For a few leaders, their candidature is more important than the political parties they represent.

In the Ramachandrapuram Assembly segment of East Godavari, Thota Thrimurthulu was the Praja Rajyam nominee in 2009. He contested against the Congress and the Telugu Desam and lost. Subsequently, he contested on a Congress ticket in the bypolls in 2012 and fought against the YSR Congress and TD and won.

Mr Thrimurthulu is now a TD candidate in the Assembly elections. Earlier, he was elected as an Independent candidate and as a TD and Congress candidate too.

In another case, former minister and MP Kottapalli Subbarayudu lost as the PR candidate from Narsapuram in West Godavari district in 2009. He won as a Congress candidate in the 2012 bypolls against the YSR Congress and is now the official candidate of the YSR Congress for the coming polls. YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy, who had campaigned against Mr Subbarayudu in the bypolls, has now selected him as the party’s nominee.

Interestingly, Mr Prasada Raju, who as a Congress candidate, had defeated Mr Subbarayudu in 2009, lost to him in 2012 and is now left without a ticket.

Former minister Nagam Janardhana Reddy, the strongman from Mahbubnagar, was a Telugu Desam candidate in the 2009 Assembly polls from Nagarkurnool. He resigned, and was elected as an Independent in the 2013 bypolls and is now contesting as a BJP candidate from the Mahbubnagar Lok Sabha seat.

Another former minister, Ms Konda Surekha, won on a Congress ticket in 2009 from the Parkal Assembly segment. She lost to the TRS candidate in the bypolls in 2013 on a YSR Congress ticket party and now is the TRS candidate from Warangal West.

There are also nearly a hundred candidates both in the Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies who had contested from one party in 2009, and is now contesting from another party.