Parties swear by the young, educated

HYDERABAD: The next council of GHMC may not only witness the presence of 75 women corporators thanks to 50% reservations, but also more number of young and educated corporators.
Almost all the political parties have fielded educated youth as their candidates wherever possible in the GHMC elections. Of the 1,333 candidates who are in the fray in all the 150 wards, nearly 450 candidates are below 35 years old and 1,100 candidates hold either graduate or post-graduate degrees.
Political analysts say the major parties TRS, Congress, BJP and TDP have preferred young and educated people in this election as they want to project fresh and clean faced candidates.Interestingly , Majlis-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) also fielded educated and young as their candidates in these elections. One of the reasons for these polls witnessing more young people be cause political leaders cutting across the parties roping in their children and relatives to join the electoral battle.
Among the educated candidates, many are graduates, as many as 100 candidates possess degrees in engineering, law, PG in business administration and science and some have completed medicine. G TRS candidate from from RK Puram division, T Anitha Reddy , is a professional doctor. She is the daughter-in-law of Maheshwaram MLA Teegala Krishna Reddy. Another TRS candidate Vijaya Reddy , who is daughter of former MLA P Janardhan Reddy , contesting from Khairatabad, completed M Tech. Similarly , Banjara Hills TRS candidate Vijaya Lakshmi Gadwal holds law and journalism degrees and worked in the USA. The candidate, who is daughter of TRS senior leader K Keshava Rao, came back to India and joined TRS a few months ago. PM Bhargavi, TRS candidate from Mettuguda, completed her MBA. Samala Hema, candidate from Seethafalmandi has resigned to her job in a software company and joined politics at the age of 23 years. She is daughter of TRS leader Karate Raju.
Congress candidate from Jambagh, Vikram Goud completed his masters degree and another candidate from Vengalraonagar D Nagarjun Reddy is a postgraduate in engineering.TDP candidate Sainath Yadav from Yousufguda is an engineering graduate. MIM also fielded educated women wherever available. The party fielded Misbahuddin, who did her M Sc in Information Systems and worked in University of Greenwich, UK, as its candidate from Sastrypuram division.
Though all parties picked candidates, who did not complete high school, the number of such candidates have been kept to about a dozen or less and only persons steeped in politics have been considered in such cases.For instance, Bharati Naik, the Congress candidate from Venkateshwara Colony studied till class V, and B Chandramma from Rahamathnagar studied till class VIII. About half a dozen MIM candidates from Old City hold class X as their educational qualification.
“In the previous council, there were about 50 women candidates and young corporators were 20. Now the young corporators number both men and women expected to reach 100 just going by the trends,“ an official of GHMC said.