Cong to field woman candidate for lone seat

Hyderabad: With not a single woman member present in the Telangana Legislative Council, which has a total strength of 40, Congress party is likely to take the lead by nominating a senior woman party leader for lone MLC seat, which the party would get under MLA quota. Following the replacement of Nerella Sharada as the State Mahila Congress president with that of Akula Lalitha on Monday, speculations are rife that the latter would be the party choice for MLC seat.

According to a senior Congress leader, the party wants to take the credit of being pro woman by giving her the ticket and take on the TRS government, which had failed to give a berth to a woman candidate in the State Cabinet. With Congress High Command not willing to go for political rehabilitation by nominating those who had lost in 2014 elections, most of the top leaders who were aspiring to get the tickets appear to be disappointed.

According to highly placed party sources, until the recent visit of AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh, all the top leaders including former PCC chiefs D Srinivas, Ponnala Lakshmaiah, MP Ponnam Prabhakar and several others had claimed their stakes in the race for the MLC election. However, the High Command made it clear that those who contested for 2014 should not take part in this year’s MLC elections.

Sources said the High Command has decided to provide chance to party men who have been working for more than 10 years but failed to get any key position. Amongst the men, the TPCC chief spokesperson Dasoju Sravan Kumar is amongst the top contenders for the MLC seat. He had joined the party before the general elections, but the party failed to accommodate him as per his aspirations.