Congress zeroes in on candidates for five ZP chairperson posts

Hyderabad: The Congress has finalised candidate names for the Zilla Parishad chairperson posts for five districts out of the 32 ZPs and rest would be announced soon. Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy would announce the names of persons who have been selected as candidates for the chairperson posts officially.

Party leaders said that Charulatha Rathod for Adilabad ZP, Kislavath Parvathi for Mahabubabad, J Dushyanth Reddy for Mahbubnagar, Maddi Rama Devi for Mancherial and Komatireddy Krishnamohan Reddy for Nalgonda ZP have been finalised.

The TPCC is yet to finalise the names of candidates for the rest of 27 ZP chairperson posts which are having polls. They would be announced in the first week of this month, party sources said. Congress leaders said that the names of ZP candidates have been finalised taking various aspects into consideration.

The reservation of the ZP chairperson post, capability of winning the Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency seat, work for the party and impression of the district Congress presidents have been taken into consideration. The TPCC president has discussed the selection with district Congress committees and the TPCC secretaries who are DCC incharges. The recommendations of them have played a key role in finalising the candidates, party leaders informed.

The Zilla Parishads are having elections in three phases which would conclude on May 27 with the announcement of the results. The voters would elect the ZPTCs and ZPTCs would then elect one of them as chairperson of Zilla Parishad.

Though the TPCC has given the authority to select the ZPTC candidates to the district Congress committees it has reserved the power to select the candidate for ZP chairperson with it. As many as 538 ZPTCs would be elected and they would elect chairpersons of 32 Zilla Parishads. Each ZP would have about 16 ZPTCs on an average and to secure the ZP chairperson post parties would require eight ZPTCs with them.

The ZPTC elections are being held on party symbol. The Congress is expecting to win at least 20 ZPs as the party leaders claimed that the people were against the government and favouring them.

However, the system of cooption members may affect the chances of Congress where the majority margin is thin.

At present, on average the TRS has about four MLAs to each district along with the support of the defected ones. Congress must win more than 10 ZPTCs in each Zilla Parishad to clinch the ZP chairperson posts.