Hyderabad: The BJP has fielded Eatala Rajender, one-time lieutenant of K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR), against the Telangana chief minister in its first list of 52 candidates released Sunday for the 30 November assembly polls.
Rajender, a former minister who was sacked by KCR, will take the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) chief head on in the Gajwel assembly segment while also defending his home base Huzurabad.
The BJP has also fielded three sitting Lok Sabha MPs — Bandi Sanjay of Karimnagar, Soyam Bapu Rao of Adilabad and Dharmapuri Arvind of Nizamabad.
Kishan Reddy, Secunderabad MP who is playing the dual role of Union minister for tourism and is also the Telangana BJP chief, has been exempted from the contest, at least for now.
Suspended MLA ‘Tiger’ Raja Singh has made a comeback, with the party choosing him to retain its seat of Goshamahal.
The constituency in the old quarters of Hyderabad, surrounded by AIMIM-dominated areas, was the only seat the BJP had managed to win in 2018, largely due to Singh’s personal popularity. The party had lost its deposits in over 100 assembly segments in the previous state polls.
Singh, who is known for his speeches targeting Muslims, was suspended from the BJP in August 2022, after the Hyderabad police claimed that the MLA had posted a video on YouTube which “was against Prophet Muhammad”. Though the video was removed, protests spread in the communally sensitive areas of the old city, prompting the party to suspend Singh.
Singh’s candidature was approved by the BJP’s central election committee, comprising party chief J.P. Nadda, PM Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and others, which met Friday in New Delhi.
Singh’s suspension was revoked Sunday by the BJP central disciplinary committee “after due consideration of his explanation in response to the show cause notice” served by the party earlier.
“You cannot hang a person for one mistake. His utterances were not in tune with party principles and so, he has been punished. He is a legislator with a good track record, working hard for his constituency,” Krishna Sagar Rao, chief spokesperson of the Telangana BJP, told ThePrint.
Not just to retain Goshamahal, party leaders said the revocation would quell the continuing resentment among BJP supporters in the state, especially in Hyderabad, over Singh’s suspension.
The firebrand former state BJP chief Sanjay is the party’s candidate for Karimnagar assembly seat, Arvind, who had defeated KCR’s daughter K Kavitha in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, has been fielded from Korutla, while Soyam Bapu Rao has been chosen for Boath (ST) constituency.
“The party selected these strong leaders, despite them being sitting MPs, in order to win the assembly seats,” Sagar Rao said.
Also Read: BJP revokes suspension of controversial Telangana MLA T Raja, fields him from Goshamahal seat
Eatala vs KCR in Gajwel
Eatala, a former minister in the KCR cabinet who held the finance and health portfolios, had been publicly expressing a desire to contest against the CM in Gajwel. The CM’s constituency has a sizeable number of people from the Mudiraj (fishermen) community, to which Eatala belongs.
Amid reports of his revolt against the BRS leadership, Eatala, one of the senior-most party leaders holding the crucial health department, was sacked by the CM in May 2021, at the height of the Covid-19 second wave. The action followed charges of land-grabbing by the minister and his associates.
In November 2021, Eatala won the Huzurabad bypoll after joining the BJP, despite the BRS government bringing in a new scheme, Dalit Bandhu, catering first to the constituency.
Eatala, the BJP election campaign committee chairman, is also contesting from Huzurabad, while KCR has this time decided to be in the fray in two assembly seats — Kamareddy, in addition to Gajwel.
Huzurabad is the second bypoll the BJP won in Telangana after Dubbaka in November 2020.
In the BJP list of candidates, Madhavaneni Raghunandan Rao, the sitting MLA, is the pick for Dubbaka. Raghunandan who was once a BRS politburo member had joined the BJP in 2014.
The name of Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy, former Congress legislator who lost the high stakes Munugode bypoll in November 2022 to the BRS, has not figured in the first list.
Rani Rudrama Reddy, a former journalist, is BJP’s nominee against minister K.T. Rama Rao in Sircilla, while Gudur Narayana Reddy, the producer of controversial movie Razakar, is the party’s candidate from Bhongir.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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