KCR announces three RS candidates

HYDERABAD: Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Wednesday declared party's candidates for three Rajya Sabha seats in Telangana going for polls in May and June.

Hetero Group chairman and managing director Bandi Parthasaradhi Reddy, granite businessman-turned-politician Vaddiraju Ravichandra, popularly known as Gayatri Ravi and Telangana Publications Pvt Ltd chairman and managing director D. Damodar Rao, will be the TRS candidates to three vacant Rajya Sabha seats from the state.

The selection of candidates surprised not only the TRS leaders but also political circles as this was the first time that the Chief Minister chose businessmen and industrialists for all the three seats unlike earlier when Rajya Sabha were given to full-time politicians and leaders from BC, SC and ST categories. While two seats were given for OCs (Reddy
and Velama) this time, one went to BC candidate Gayatri Ravi, who hails from Munnuru Kapu community.

Although the party chief did not declare officially about who is being fielded for the bypoll among the three candidates, official sources said that Gayatri Ravi had been chosen for the bypoll for leftover two-year tenure till April 2, 2024, while the other two candidates were chosen for full six-year tenure till June 2028.

The TRS winning all the three seats unanimously is a foregone conclusion given the fact that it enjoys a huge majority in Legislative Assembly while Opposition parties lack even required numbers to field candidates. It requires the support of 10 MLAs for each candidate to
file the nomination and no opposition party has the strength of 10 MLAs in the Assembly at present.

While bypoll is being held for one seat on May 30 which has a leftover tenure of just two years, the election for two seats having full six-year tenure will be held on June 10. The bypoll was necessitated following the resignation of TRS Rajya Sabha member Banda Prakash in December 2021 after the Chief Minister nominated him as MLC. Banda Prakash's six-year tenure as MP was supposed to end on April 2, 2024.

The other two seats fell vacant with the ending of six-year tenure of TRS MPs V. Lakshmikantha Rao and Dharmapuri Srinivas. Parthasaradhi Reddy played a key role in nurturing the Hyderabad-based Hetero Group to emerge as the largest closely held pharmaceutical company in India and also a world leader in production of anti-retroviral drugs.

Gayatri Ravi is a granite businessman-turned-politician who contested the Assembly polls unsuccessfully in 2018 from Warangal Urban as the Congress candidate. Later, he joined the TRS just before the Lok Sabha polls in April 2019 and has been working for the party since then.

D. Damodar Rao is a law graduate and has been a member of the TRS right from its launch. He worked as the party secretary (finance) and is known to be a close associate of K. Chandrashekar Rao. He went on to become the CMD of Telangana Publications Pvt Ltd, which publishes Telugu and English newspapers in the state.