Hyderabad: The Congress will release the names of 58 candidates in its first list of candidates for the Telangana Assembly polls on Sunday, after the AICC’s central election committee (CEC) headed by Mallikarjun Kharge cleared them at a Delhi meeting on Saturday.
AICC screening committee chairman for Telangana, K. Muraleedharan, addressing mediapersons in Delhi, said: “Talks with Left parties for alliance have been going on. A clarity on the number of seats to be offered to CPI and CPM will emerge on Sunday and soon after, the first list with 58 names will be released.”
He said that the CEC will meet again on October 17 or 18 to finalise the candidates for the remaining seats. Candidates for all 119 Assembly seats will be declared by October 19, he said.
The Congress is all set to kick its campaign into overdrive after the first list is released, with senior leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra set to flag off a bus yatra in the state on October 18.
As part of the plan, the Gandhi scions will offer prayers at the Kondagattu Anjaneyaswamy temple in Jagtial, where they will hold their first roadshow. The bus yatra will then move to Nizamabad.
TPCC chief A. Revanth Reddy told mediapersons in Delhi on Saturday that the detailed schedule of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s visit for the bus yatra in Telangana will be released on Sunday.
In the discussion over seat sharing with Left parties, held among AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal, Revanth Reddy, CLP leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and MP N. Uttam Kumar, the party reportedly decided to offer two seats each to the CPI and CPM in erstwhile undivided Khammam and Nalgonda districts.
Party sources said that the Congress offered Kothagudem and Munugode seats to CPI and Bhadrachalam and Miryalaguda seats to CPM, following which the Left parties sought time till Sunday to inform them about their decision.
Senior leaders Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy and Tummala Nageswara Rao, who quit BRS and joined Congress, on Saturday met Rahul Gandhi and Venugopal to discuss the allotment of tickets. It was learnt that the top leaders asked Nageswara Rao to contest from Khammam and Srinivas Reddy from Palair.
Nageswara Rao had sought the Palair ticket as he won from this seat on a BRS ticket in May 2016, but lost in 2018.
Srinivas Reddy joined the Congress in June, reportedly after he was assured the Palair ticket, sources said. Nageswara Rao joined the Congress on September 17.
After the meeting, Nageswara Rao refused to comment on this issue. “I will follow the directions of party high command on ticket allotment. I don't want to embarrass the party by commenting on this issue,” he said.
While the Left parties are yet to announce their decision, an alliance would see the revival of a tie-up after nearly 20 years, when they dethroned the TD government in undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2004.
Although the Congress had sought a ‘grand alliance’ with Left parties for the 2018 Assembly polls, only CPI joined hands with the party, while the CPM joined the Bahujan Left Front, an alliance of 28 political parties, and social and minority organisations.
