Pocharam breaks speaker jinx by retaining Banswada seat

Hyderabad: Pocharam Srinivas Reddy broke a jinx haunting the Legislative Assembly by becoming the first incumbent Speaker from the days of the undivided Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to retain his seat. The seven-time MLA achieved this with an emphatic win in Banswada, defeating the Congress’ Enugu Ravinder Reddy by a margin of 23,464 votes.

The endowments minister post was also considered a jinx. Allola Indrakaran Reddy broke it in 2018 only to succumb this time. He lost to the BJP’s Aleti Maheshwar Reddy at Nirmal by over 50,000 votes.

When the Congress was in power from 2004 to 2014, speaker K.R. Suresh Reddy lost the election in 2009 and his successor Nadendla Manohar in 2014.
When Telangana state was formed in June 2014, S. Madhusudhana Chary was elected Speaker. He lost the election in 2018.

This created such fear among the legislators that when the BRS retained power for a second term in 2018, there were no takers for the Speaker’s post. When no senior leader was keen on the post, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao convinced Srinivas Reddy to accept the post, which he did and completed his full five-year term.

Incidentally, this time, there was a special focus on him and Banswada vis-à-vis the Speaker jinx. However, Srinivas Reddy dispelled the myth surrounding the post.