Sujana Chowdary among BJP candidates for Andhra Assembly polls

Amaravati: Former Union Minister Y. S. Chowdary, BJP state Vice President P. Vishnu Kumar Raju and former state minister Kamineni Srinivas are among 10 candidates announced by the BJP for Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections.

Sujana Chowdary, as Y. S. Chowdary is popularly known, will contest from Vijayawada West. The former Rajya Sabha member, who was Union Minister of State for Science and Technology between 2014 and 2018, had quit the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to join the BJP in 2019.

Vishnu Kumar Raju has been named as the candidate from Visakhapatnam North. He was elected from the same constituency in 2014. However, in the 2019 elections, Raju finished a poor fourth.

Kamineni Srinivas, who was Health Minister in the TDP-led coalition government between 2014 and 2018, will contest from Kaikalur.

The other candidates are N. Eswara Rao (Etcherla), Pangi Rajarao (Araku Valley ST), Bojja Roshanna (Badvel SC), C. Adinarayana Reddy (Jammalamadugu), P. V. Parthasarathi (Adoni) and Y. Satya Kumar (Dharmavaram).

The BJP is contesting the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the TDP and Jana Sena Party. The BJP has been allotted 10 Assembly and six Lok Sabha seats. It has already announced candidates for Lok Sabha seats.

Simultaneous elections to the 175-member Assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state are scheduled on May 13.

The BJP had contested the 2014 elections in alliance with the TDP and they were backed by Jana Sena led by actor Pawan Kalyan. The BJP had bagged four Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats. It was part of the TDP-led coalition government in the state till 2018 when TDP walked out of the BJP-led NDA alliance.

The BJP contested the 2019 elections on its own and drew a blank.