Congress finalises Mahaboobnagar candidates

HYDERABAD: The state Congress leadership, which held a high-level review meeting here on Saturday on the coming by-elections, felt that the party should concentrate only on winnable seats.It also came to the opinion that the party should treat the YSR Congress in north Andhra and the TRS in Telangana as its main rivals in the coming by-elections.The Election Commission issued a notification on holding by-elections in seven Assembly constituencies on March 18. Out of seven, six are in Telangaan and one in Nellore district.Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and PCC president Botcha Satyanarayana conducted the review meetings. To begin with, they reviewed the party's prospects in Mahaboobnagar district with the DCC leaders. The three-hour-long meeting, also attended by information and public relations minister DK Aruna and information & technology minister Ponnala Laxmaiah, finalised the candidacy of Vijayalaxmi for Mahaboobnagar, K Damodar Reddy for Nagarkurnool and P Vishnuvardhan Reddy for Kollapur seats.  The leaders sounded confident that the winning chances of the Congress were good in the three Assembly constituencies in Mahaboobnagar district. A Congress victory in the district, which is being represented in the Lok Sabha by TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao, would   create a positive impact all over the region, they felt and decided to finalise the election strategy to target the TRS in the district. They even advised party leaders from other districts to adopt the same strategy to defeat the TRS."When YS Rajasekhara Reddy was in power he was able to minimise the impact of TRS in the Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency and YSR's  efforts failed in the 2006 by-elections. Again, Congress got good results in 2008. Kiran Kumar Reddy too is adopting a strategy similar to YSR's in the forthcoming elections," one of the senior Congress leaders told Express and hoped that the party would reap good electoral results.The chief minister advised Telangana Congress leaders to go to town claiming that only the Congress can deliver a separate state.