Telugu Desam in a fix as Congress readying candidate list

Hyderabad: As the Congress was readying to finetune contestants list, the TD is under pressure from ticket aspirants as it has to limit itself only to the seats it gets in Mahakutami. The party wants at least 20 seats which is unlikely. The Congress too is in a fix over which seat to allocate to alliance members.

Telangana Telugu Desam president L. Ramana said that it takes some more time to bargain on seats from Mahakutami. Right now we are working on the common minimum agenda taking into account the traditional promises made by the party to the electorate. We are hopeful that deserving aspirants could be accommodated. He refrained from putting a number on seats saying “it is too early”.

He said, “We have committed cadre and no matter what other parties project, our cadre sail with us only.” To a question he said that there was no dearth of leaders in the party and accommodating all would have to be seen in the light of the alliance, he said. 

In constituencies like Sanathnagar, Musheerabad and Amberpet, the TD aspirants were bringing pressure on the state leadership to bargain with Mahakutami and get them in their favour.

Daykar Reddy and Seetha Dayakar Reddy in Mahbubnagar district too were confident of Maktal and Devarakadra constituencies to go in favour of the TD and were making campaign preparations. Some of them had informally started campaigning for themselves, it is learnt.

Mahakutami, an alliance sewed up with the Congress, the TD and the CPI has more aspirants than the number of seats available. The real litmus test for the TD would be its capacity to bargain to accommodate all strong aspirants. With new leaders joining the Congress with assurance of a ticket, the prospects of other alliance parties were shrinking, a leader said. 

An aspirant said, “The idea of Mahakutami was given by our leader Chandrababu Naidu. Therefore, without the TD there is no alliance and the interests of the party had to be given due weightage.”