Cong gears up to tackle rebel trouble

Hyderabad: The Congress party is firming up its strategies both to finalise the list of candidates for the Assembly elections as well as to ensure that the rebel trouble would be bare minimum.

The party central election committee would meet in the AICC war room on Sunday to take a call on the recommendations made by the state committee. It is yet to decide on whether to announce all the names in one go or announce the list in a phased manner. Party sources say that the list would be announced soon after the election notification was announced.

The party sources indicate that at least one senior leader in each assembly segment may be left without a ticket as the number of aspirants are too high. It wants to ensure that those who do not get tickets do not play spoilsport.

At the same time, there is still a lurking fear that the Centre may decide to club the polls of all the five states, including Telangana with Lok Sabha elections.

As the party is anticipating serious rebel trouble and exodus of disappointed ticket aspirants to rival parties soon after the list was announced, the Congress has decided to entrust the job of convincing such leaders to senior party leaders and ‘Trouble shooters like Digvijay Singh, Jairam Ramesh, Veerappa Moily, Ashok Chouhan, Prithviraj Chauhan and Sushil Kumar Shinde. They will be stationed in each division in the state. One division would consist of 15 assembly constituencies.

It may be mentioned here that the Congress had seen a trailer soon after the BRS leader and Malkajgiri MLA M Hanumantha Rao joined the party after he was given assurance of allotting the party ticket to him and his son M Rohit.

Upset over this, DCC chiefs of Medak and Medchal districts who were in the race quit the Congress for not considering their names. The party wants to minimise such incidents lest it may face trouble in about 70 constituencies.