BRS leadership against fielding sitting MLAs, MLCs in LS fray 

Hyderabad's Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leadership is carefully selecting candidates for the upcoming Parliament elections to avoid repeating past mistakes.

With the time for Parliament (Lok Sabha) elections approaching fast, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leadership has intensified its exercise to shortlist capable candidates from out of the long list of aspirants maintaining caution of not repeating the mistakes, which it perceives cost the party’s fortunes to a large extent in the Assembly elections.

First, the party leadership is understood to be strongly against fielding any MLAs and MLCs, who still have ample tenure left, as it could stretch the party’s stamina further in the scenario of it being in the Opposition. “The leadership’s line of thinking is not unfounded as retaining the vacated seats, in a situation when the ruling party could go all out to win them with the help of all might at its disposal,” a senior leader said concurring the view.

Party sources stated that the leadership is giving priority only to the winnability of candidates even if it warranted changing some sitting MPs as the hesitation of the leadership in taking such a risk had cost the party dearly because the margin of popular vote difference between it and the Congress is very small. However, the leadership is not in a hurry to announce the candidates in advance this time as it did for the Assembly elections and it has plans to name the candidates only after the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) do so.

Of the nine seats BRS had won in 2019, two were with small margins over 6,000 (Zaheerabad) and 14,000 (Chevella) votes and it had lost two other seats with similar margins of over 5,000 (Bhongir) and Malkajgiri (10,000) votes.

The leadership is understood to have given a go-ahead to sitting MPs in Chevella (G. Ranjith Reddy), Zaheerabad (B.B. Patil) and Khammam (Nama Nageswara Rao) and B. Vinod Kumar for Karimnagar. Of the remaining sitting seats K. Prabhakar Reddy quit as Medak MP after his election to the Assembly from Dubbak recently and the other five are ST, SC reserved seats, where new faces are throwing their towel in the ring along with the sitting MPs.

“Although the list of aspirants is long for sitting and other constituencies, the leadership could weigh in favour of popular leaders who have the wherewithal to take on the ruling party candidates. Others will be pacified to wait for their turn explaining that it won’t be easy to contest the Parliament polls in the changed political scenario,” the senior leader who is also in the race said.