Naidu announces nominees for RS polls

Vijayawada: Breaking a day-long suspense over selection of candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls, Chief Minister and TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu took almost everyone by utter surprise by naming former minister and top industrialist TG Venkatesh from Kurnool district as one of his party’s candidates. His late night announcement dashed the hopes of many aspirants from socially backward communities, especially Dalits.

Re-nomination of YS Chowdary, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, and fielding of railway minister Suresh Prabhu from the BJP is a foregone conclusion. Naming of the candidate for the third seat itself engaged the party rank and file literally in a nail-biting suspense. When the CM was expected to choose someone either from the Backward Classes or the Scheduled Castes as part of realising social justice in the RS polls, he introduced Venkatesh. Although Venkatesh, hailing from Vysya community, launched himself into the TDP during the Naidu’s `Praja Deevena’ programme during his previous stint which aimed to draw neutrals into the party fold from different walks of life, he switched to the Congress and later defected to the TDP just before the 2014 general elections.

Incidentally, both the seats went to the upper castes. Speculations did the rounds till an hour before his official announcement that he might handpick party former minister and his loyalist JR Pushparaj from Guntur.
Naidu even caught the BJP circles unawares by introducing Suresh Prabhu in place of Nirmala Sitaraman, union minister for commerce and industry, who had to shift to Karnataka for re-nomination. Chandrababu is understood to have expected materialisation of special railway zone, a bifurcation commitment, in the successor state through Prabhu as a quid pro quo. As expected, Naidu chose to stay away from fielding a candidate for the fourth seat since numbers do not work in his favour. The RS candidates will file their papers on Tuesday.