Congress announces MLC candidates, leaves one seat to ally CPI in Andhra

Hyderabad: The AICC on Sunday announced party candidates for three MLC seats under the MLAs quota for which polling is scheduled to be held on March 20.

While five MLC seats under the MLA quota will fall vacant by March 29, and the Election Commission had released the schedule to fill these vacancies some time ago, Congress has decided to field three candidates and left one seat to its ally CPI. The opposition BRS will field one candidate.

Interestingly, with the number of MLAs in the state assembly, Congress and BRS can comfortably win all the seats both parties are contesting, but for the CPI candidate to win, it needs the support of AIMIM and the 10 turncoat MLAs of BRS.

As the defections case filed by BRS is being heard by the Supreme Court, it would be interesting to see the election of the CPI candidate with the support of turncoat MLAs.

Congress picked Addanki Dayakar, Kethavath Shankar Naik, and actor-turned-politician Vijayashanti to contest the three seats. Addanki Dayakar, a dalit, is a staunch loyalist of Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, while Naik is said to be backed by a powerful minister in Revanth Reddy's cabinet, N Uttam Kumar Reddy. Vijayashanti, a popular yesteryear actress, had quit BRS before the polls and joined Congress.

The elections arose due to the completion of the terms of Mahmood Ali, Satyavathi Rathod, Seri Subash Reddy, and Yegge Mallesham, all from BRS, and Mirza Riyaz ul Hassan from the AIMIM.

Each candidate has to poll 20 first preference votes to get elected as an MLC.