Hyderabad: The Congress on Wednesday named former Union minister Renuka Chowdhury and former Telangana Youth Congress president M. Anil Kumar Yadav as the party's candidates for Rajya Sabha elections in Telangana state. This will be fourth time that Chowdhury will enter the Rajya Sabha and a first for Anil Kumar Yadav.
Elections for three Rajya Sabha seats are scheduled for February 27 and the last date to file nominations is February 15. However, by fielding two candidates and leaving the third to the BRS, the Congress has avoided the necessity of an election. The candidates are set to be elected unopposed.
The party leadership had earlier explored the option of fielding three candidates for all three seats with hopes of cross-voting by BRS MLAs and securing votes from other parties.
The Congress, having a strength of 64 MLAs, can win two seats, while the BRS, with a strength of 39 MLAs, can win one seat. Each candidate requires 31 votes to win.
Renuka Chowdhury was also in the race for the Khammam Lok Sabha ticket, but since there was already a heavy rush for the Khammam LS ticket, the party leadership decided to side-step any dissent or infighting by nominating her.
The selection of Anil Kumar Yadav came as a big surprise to many in the party circles as several senior leaders like V. Hanumantha Rao, Addanki Dayakar, and G. Chinna Reddy were in the race.
The son of former Secunderabad Lok Sabha member M. Anjan Kumar Yadav, Anil Kumar Yadav was an aspirant for the Secunderabad Assembly seat during the recent Assembly polls but was denied the ticket. His father Anjan Kumar Yadav contested from Musheerabad but lost to the BRS.
This is the fourth time that Renuka Chowdhury will be a Rajya Sabha member, after her previous stint from April 3, 2012, to April 2, 2018, from the Congress and from 1986 to 1998 from the Telugu Desam. She was elected to the Lok Sabha from 1999 to 2009 from Khammam on a Congress ticket. She was the Union minister in the H.D. Deve Gowda and Dr Manmohan Singh governments.
