Congress to send Renuka, Anil to RS

Hyderabad: Giving importance to social engineering, AICC has chosen senior Congress leader and former union minister Renuka Chowdhury and youth Congress leader Anil Kumar Yadav as candidates for Rajya Sabha Telangana. Anil Kumar Yadav is from the Secunderabad Lok Sabha segment which has a large number of voters from the Yadav community.

The Congress feels that sending Anil to Rajya Sabha would help them win the hearts of this community during the Lok Sabha polls. Anil was aspiring to contest from Secunderabad. Now, the youth leader would garner support of his entire community for Congress during the Lok Sabha elections. 

Anil‘s father Anjan Kumar Yadav was MP from the same segment in 2004 and 2009. Congress was planning to field a senior leader from Secunderabad this time.

Renuka, who was a strong aspirant for party ticket to contest from the Khammam Lok Sabha seat, has been chosen for Rajya Sabha. As TDP leader Renuka was known as a firebrand leader here who had even challenged the then strong Congress leader P Janardhan Reddy in Khairatabad area by stopping his car. Another advantage of sending her to Rajya Sabha was to facilitate selecting the one of the two aspiring candidates which includes the younger brother of Revenue Minister P Srinivas Reddy and Nandi, wife of deputy CM and finance minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka for Khammam Lok Sabha seat.

The BRS is likely to field Sai Kiran son of former minister Talsani Srinivas Yadav. Sai Kiran lost to BJP leader and Union Minister G Kishan Reddy in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

However, it is now clear that no one from the Gandhi family would be contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Telangana as AICC has decided to send Sonia Gandhi to Rajya Sabha and is contemplating to ask Priyanka Gandhi to contest from Raebareli. Sonia Gandhi had never lost an election from Raebareli. Hence the Congress wants Priyanka to be her successor there.