Gajwel dilemma for Opposition: No takers in Congress, BJP to fight KCR

Hyderabad: There has been a huge rush for submitting applications for party tickets both in case of Congress party which had fixed a big fee and for the BJP tickets where no fee was levied. The BJP feels happy that this would help them in countering the Congress and BRS campaign that they cannot find candidates to put up 119 candidates.

All this sounds fine, but amongst this list no one seems to be interested in contesting from Gajwel against Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao. Even no senior leader in these two parties is willing to contest from this Assembly constituency. It may be recalled that senior leaders like Eatala Rajender of BJP had recently said that he was willing to contest from anywhere his party decides which includes Gajwel.

But it is now learnt that he has developed cold feet for two reasons. One, the survey reportedly gave a clear edge to KCR from here. Secondly, he feels that the time for winning the hearts of the voters was too short. Hence, if he contests from Gajwel he may lose from here as well as Huzurabad which has been bastion. Earlier, Eatala felt that he had to contest from Gajwel, and seek a ticket for his wife Jamuna Reddy from Huzurabad.

The Congress leaders too do not appear to be keen to take on KCR. Though it was felt that MLA T Narsa Reddy who the party feels can give a tough fight is learnt to be not so interested in contesting from here. He says he has not been active in the constituency for the past three years and re-establishing contact with people could be a difficult task at this stage when polls are not very far off.

However, TPCC chief A Revanth Reddy was making an all-out effort to field a strong candidate from the Congress party in Gajwel. KCR had won Gajwel seat by a majority of 59,000 votes against Congress candidate V Pratap Reddy in the 2018 elections. Later, he joined BRS.

The BJP had focussed on Gajwel constituency more when Bandi Sanjay was the state party president. He used to visit the constituency frequently and tried to explain to the people how KCR had failed to fulfil his promises to the people of the constituency. But after the change of guard, the party seems to have lost that advantage as the saffron party seems to have lost its steam.

The new BJP state chief and Union Minister for Tourism and Culture G Kishan Reddy is hopping between Delhi and Hyderabad as he has dual role to perform both as T-BJP president and Union Minister. He is yet to take a call on this constituency and come up with an action plan.