HYDERABAD: The Congress seems to be banking on the 19 per cent 'undecided voters' — which the party found in its surveys — to come to power. The party leadership believes this is the 'anti-incumbency' vote, which will favour the Congress. These 19 per cent of voters had received government benefits but were looking at other parties.
"It clearly shows that they don't want to vote for BRS. Today there is only one strong party in Telangana, which can take on BRS, and that is Congress," TPCC president A. Revanth Reddy said in an informal chat with reporters at Gandhi Bhavan here on Monday. "Our surveys clearly indicated that BRS will not cross 25 seats this time. There is a severe anti-incumbency mood against the BRS."
Revanth Reddy said that the survey reports submitted by Sunil Kanugolu will play a key role in the selection of candidates, as his surveys had fetched good dividends in the Karnataka polls.
"Kanugolu submitted the list of candidates for Karnataka Assembly polls in A, B and C categories. In the A-category, he mentioned about 134 candidates who were sure to win. In the B-category, he submitted a list of 18 candidates, where experiments could be done. The tickets for these seats were allocated to those on the basis of political compulsions and caste equations. All the 134 candidates in the first category won.”
Reddy reiterated that the party high command has not declared candidates for any seat so far and the party's state leadership has no powers to promise or allot tickets to anyone. "The Central Election Committee (CEC) is the final authority.
From our side, we shortlisted a few candidates for each seat on behalf of the state screening committee and referred them to the CEC to take the final call."
Revanth Reddy further said that no date has been finalised for the CEC meeting in Delhi to finalise and declare candidates and the reports appearing in the media in this regard were 'mere speculation.'
