For quite some time, there had been a talk that Union tourism minister G Kishan Reddy was appointed as the president of Telangana unit of Bharatiya Janata Party only to project him as the prospective chief ministerial candidate of the party.
For, Kishan Reddy is a dignified politician with acceptability among all sections of the party, besides being a popular figure among the people. He commands respect among the people and officials alike.
There may be some sections of people who do not like rabble-rousers like Bandi Sanjay who make cheap comments, but nobody has any negative feeling about Kishan Reddy. Even those who are neutral in their political stand respect Kishan Reddy.
But going by the reports in a section of media, the BJP central leadership is not very keen on projecting Kishan Reddy as the CM candidate. In fact, the reports said, the party might not give the assembly ticket to Kishan Reddy this time, but would nominate him to Rajya Sabha.
According to these reports, the BJP might give ticket to Kishan Reddy’s wife Kavya Reddy to contest the assembly elections in Telangana from Amberpet constituency. Though she is a first timer in politics, the party thought fielding her from Amberpet would attract women voters.
The party might also field Bandaru Vijayalakshmi, daughter of former Union minister and present Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya from Musheerabad or Secunderabad constituency.
In a sharp contrast to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi which gave the party tickets to only seven women, the BJP is planning to field a good number of women candidates, so that it would fetch a huge mileage to the party in the elections.
Accordingly, several women leaders like D K Aruna, Vijayashanti, Jayasudha, Banda Karthika Reddy, Juluru Keerthi Reddy, Geetha Murthy, Rani Rudarama, Akula Vijaya, Sri Vani and Dr Veerapaneni Padma are among those whose tickets are more or less confirmed, sources said.