(Prashanth Reddy)
Hyderabad: Telangana Congress senior leader K Jana Reddy made it clear that he was not contemplating to enter the fray for the Huzurnagar assembly seat by-polls, which is likely to fall vacant following TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy’s election to the Lok Sabha.
The talk among the Congress circles is that Uttam will prefer to go to Lok Sabha and resign from Huzurnagar Assembly seat, Nalgonda district. He won the seat in 2019 Assembly polls.
Dismissing the talk that he was mulling contesting from Huzurnagar, Jagan Reddy said he would rather prefer relaxing than contesting another election that too from Huzurnagar.
“I am not averse to contest the polls. But, not before 2023. I am getting ready for the 2023 election and I am not in a hurry to enter the Assembly. I did not enter the Lok Sabha electoral fray despite Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi offering me a chance to contest the Lok Sabha polls,” Jana told media Saturday.
He said the verdict of Telangana people in the just concluded Lok Sabha Election was a people’s mandate against ruling TRS’ propensity to engineer defections.
“I had earlier cautioned that encouraging defections were not good for any political party. It’s clear that the people of Telangana were not happy with the defections. They gave a resounding verdict against defections and dashed the hopes of TRS getting 16 seats. I again caution that the people are taking note of the undemocratic practices of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao,” Jana added.
Referring to ‘mahaghathbandhan’, which performed miserably in Uttar Pradesh, the doyen Telangana politics said though people welcomed the alliance initially. “They, however, rejected it as every leader was staking claim to the post of Prime Minister, thereby creating confusion in the minds of the people,” he said.
“The alliance could have been a success had they projected Rahul Gandhi as the PM candidate,” Jana opined.