KARIMNAGAR: Sircilla is a key assembly seat in Telangana, which IT minister K.T. Rama Rao has won four consecutive times in 2009, 2010, 2014 and 2018, defeating K.K. Mahendar Reddy of Congress.
With the group politics within Congress in the constituency becoming a major headache for Congress leadership, it looks like Rama Rao will win for the fifth time after Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has announced KTR’s candidature from Sircilla in the first list of BRS candidates.
While K.K. Mahendar Reddy has once again applied for the Congress ticket from Sircilla, Chiti Umesh Rao, official spokesperson of Congress party, has emerged as a strong contender for the seat.
At a recent meeting in Sircilla Congress party office, supporters of Mahendar Reddy and Umesh Rao clashed with each other on flexi issue. Senior leader Mahendar Reddy’s followers contended that Umesh Rao should have included their leader’s photo on the flexi before putting it up. Moreover, the meeting itself has been convened by the Umesh Rao group without informing local party leaders.
Supporters of both leaders threw chairs at each other and also clashed, leading to injuries and hospitalisation of some.
However, not just Mahendar Reddy and Umesh Rao, senior Congress leaders Sangitham Srinivas, Congress town president, and state executive member Nagula Satyanarayana Goud are also in the race for the ticket from Sircilla assembly constituency.
Satyanarayana and Srinivas have been with the Congress for past five decades. They have preserved the party’s identity against the onslaught of BRS. Both are lobbying hard for the ticket, along with Mahendar Reddy and Umesh Rao.
