Hyderabad: The BJP and the Congress may have much to thank their arch rival BRS for in this year’s Lok Sabha elections in Telangana.
And with nominations for the May 13 polling for the elections set to begin on Thursday, the stage is set for nine of the 17 Lok Sabha constituencies where leaders, who were until recently in the BRS, and in some cases turned their party colours on a dime and were made candidates of the parties they joined, take on their former party colleagues.
These political friends turned political foes will face off. if the parties do not make any last-minute changes, in Warangal, Nalgonda, Adilabad, Mahbubabad, Zaheerabad, Chevella, Malkajgiri and Secunderabad constituencies.
While in eight of these constituencies it is a single BRS leader who jumped ship to join either the BJP or the Congress, it is in Warangal that the BRS lost two of its leaders to the other parties.
One of them, Dr. Kadiam Kavya, quit the BRS two days after she was declared as the BRS candidate by party president K. Chandrashekar Rao, and joined the Congress and was immediately named as its candidate. The second to have jumped the BRS ship is Aroori Ramesh, a former BRS MLA who switched to the BJP and was equally promptly rewarded by the BJP, which declared him as its candidate in Warangal.
The fast developments in Warangal led to some serious consternation in the BRS and its leaders slammed Kavya, and her father and senior BRS leader Kadiam Srihari, who too joined the Congress along with his daughter on March 31, and accused them of backstabbing their parent party. These sudden, but not unexpected, developments forced the BRS to rethink its strategy, and prospects in Warangal and it finally on April 12 named Dr. Marepalli Sudhir Kumar, the Hanamkonda municipal chairman. as its face for the Lok Sabha seat battle in the constituency.
In all, the BRS lost five of its leaders to the BJP, and four to Congress and all these nine got tickets from the parties that they joined.
On the positive side for the BRS amidst this quit-the-party-while-you-can-run rush, it had just one gain, that of BSP’s R.S. Praveen Kumar, who joined the BRS party. The BRS also gave its tickets to two ‘long-time’ joinees to fight on its behalf from Malkajgiri and Chevella constituencies.
Who went from where to where
Name – LS Constituency/Party ticket – The Jump
R.S. Praveen Kumar – Nagarkurnool/BRS – to BRS from BSP
Dr. Kadiam Kavya – Warangal/Cong – to Cong from BRS
Sanampudi Saidireddy – Nalgonda/BJP – to BJP from BRS
Aroori Ramesh – Warangal/BJP – to BJP from BRS
Godem Nagesh – Adilabad/BJP – to BJP from BRS
Azmeera Seetaram Naik – Mahbubabad/BJP – to BJP from BRS
B.B. Patil – Zaheerabad/BJP – to BJP from BRS
G. Ranjith Reddy – Chevella/Cong – to Cong from BRS
Ragidi Laxma Reddy – Malkajgiri/BRS – to BRS from Cong (in October 2023)
Kasani Gnaneshwar Mudiraj - Chevella/BRS) – to BRS from TDP (in November 2023)
Sunitha Mahender Reddy – Malkajgiri/Cong – to Cong from BRS
Danam Nagender – Secunderabad/Cong – to Cong from BRS
