How good are LIC agents at their work? The best, if K.T. Rama Rao is anyone to go by. Of late, the BRS leader and minister has taken to talking about LIC agents, saying they have the power to melt even stone-hearted people and convince them that their life could be in peril and their last breath could just be a few moments away. They convince even the hardiest of people that they are vulnerable and they should buy life insurance, KTR has been saying. For KTR, there is a reason to do so, he wants other BRS leaders and party workers to be as effective as LIC agents, convince people to vote for the BRS and make K. Chandrashekar Rao the chief minister for a third time. Inspiration, apparently, can come from anywhere when the stakes are high.
GEETHA REDDY TURNS DOWN MUCH-COVETED TICKET
At a time when hopefuls in the Congress are doing everything to get a ticket — from meeting senior and national leaders, to drumming up support, to organising events with their followers at either Gandhi Bhavan or on social media — Dr J. Geetha Reddy made a rare move by being the one leader who turned down a ticket. The senior leader was offered the contest from Zaheerabad recently but decided not to pursue it. Dr Reddy, who quit her flourishing medical career in America along with her doctor husband and returned to India in the late ’80s to join politics at the behest of the late Rajiv Gandhi, decided to leave active politics owing to health reasons. Despite being asked by the Telangana state Congress leadership and senior national leaders, she decided to hang in the towel after being a four-time MLA and having served as minister. She will support the party’s candidate in her constituency as well as elsewhere purely depending upon her health, she conveyed.
YOUNG POSE A THREAT TO OLD
It’s hard to figure out what the youth generally want. The mystery of how to click with the younger lot, especially in the run-up to an election, is something any political party would love to solve. Giving this a shot in Medak is the Congress which has decided to field Mynampally Rohith Rao from the constituency. The 25-year-old came as a package deal with his father Hanumanth Rao who got the Malkajgiri ticket from the Congress and is hoping that he can cut through the clutter and get the youth vote. This has caught the attention of the old battle axes in other parties. In a war that is shaping into a young vs. old, the seniors view this as a threat, a matter of debate in the merit of youthful exuberance vis-a-vis hard-nosed experience.
CANDIDATES DIG UP CYBER DIRT ON RIVALS
A good clean record is something that can always help a candidate seeking votes. Taking this to heart are some leaders from the Adilabad districts who have been busy scrubbing their online records of anything that could be possibly controversial and could be used against them by their rivals. Even as the clean-up ops are underway, the very same candidates have also engaged sleuths with tech experience to dig up dirt from online records about their rivals. There is good demand for old “material” in the wake of the elections. After all, the philosophy appears to be “if you’ve got something to clean up, you can bet your rival has a similar problem too”.
JAGAN SHIFTING HIS OFFICE BY DECEMBER
House-warming ceremonies can be tricky at times. The right day, time, down to the second have to be in place for most. Now imagine this in the scenario of the shifting of the CM’s office to a different city. That is what has now gripped the non-political Joint Action Committee which has been going around talking about how Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is all set to shift his workplace to Vizag by Dasara. But, with Jagan declaring that he is likely to do so only in December, the JAC is left wondering if they should continue with its “awareness” campaign about the CM shifting office or take a break. Clearly, there are no simple answers when it comes to dealing with a CM’s plans.
