Rahul Gandhi campaign delays second list

​Hyderabad: Announcement of the second list of candidates of the Congress may be delayed as AICC president Rahul Gandhi is campaigning in Chhattisgarh and would not be available to the Central Election Committee on Wednesday and Thursday.

According to sources, the second list of the candidates with nearly 28 candidates may be released on Thursday or Friday after return of Rahul Gandhi to Delhi. This has put the Congress leaders of those constituencies on tenterhooks.  PCC leaders Uttam Kumar Reddy and Jana Reddy are staying at Delhi to complete the exercise and several aspirers of Congress were also camping in the national capital to secure the tickets.

Party leaders said that issuing the second list of the Congress would be much complicated than the first one as it contains many landmines. Denial of ticket to one leader would lead to trouble. The second list includes constituencies like Sanathnagar, LB Nagar, Ibrahimpatnam, Jangaon, Warangal East, Shadnagar and several others. 

Here there are more leaders aspiring for tickets or those constituencies would be given to alliance partners. Former minister P Sankar Rao said that he would contest as independent in Shadnagar if the ticket is not given to him. 

He is opposing proposal to allocate ticket to Pratap Reddy from this constituency. The AICC is taking all precautions to contain the damage with the announcement of the second list. Already it has been facing a lot of trouble with the release of the first list. The Congress has settled the issues with the CPI after the later relented to accept three seats.  

However, Congress is yet to announce three seats of Telugu Desam and three more seats of Telangana Jana Samithi. Demands of Telugu Desam and TJS for allocation of a few seats to them where Congress was strong has been leading to confrontation of the leaders of Congress with the state leadership. 

Meanwhile, star campaigner of PCC Vijayasanthi has announced that she was not contesting for Assembly. She rubbished the news that her name was not considered in giving tickets. She said that she was quite busy with the campaign.