Political atmosphere in Huzurabad assembly constituency in Telangana is gradually heating up with the by-election to the seat expected to be held in a couple of months.
Former health minister Eatala Rajender, who represented Huzurabad till recently, resigned from the seat after quitting the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and joining the Bharatiya Janata Party, necessitating the by-elections in the constituency.
While Rajender wants to prove his personal hold over the Huzurabad constituency by winning the seat by all means, the ruling TRS is pulling out all the stops to defeat Rajender and retain its supremacy in the state.
In the last elections, the main fight in Huzurabad was between the TRS, which was represented by Rajender and the Congress, represented by P Kaushik Reddy, cousin of then Pradesh Congress Committee president N Uttam Kumar Reddy.
The BJP could not win even a couple of thousand votes and lost its deposit.
Since Kaushik Reddy is all set to defect to the TRS and is most likely to be the party candidate in Huzurabad. So, for all practical purposes, the fight is between the BJP, represented by Rajender and the TRS, which is likely to be represented by Kaushik Reddy.
But the Congress has its own vote bank and also strong cadre base in Huzurabad. Not all of them would go along with Kaushik Reddy.
So, the Congress party is also going to put up a tough fight here.
That is precisely why newly-appointed Pradesh Congress Committee president A Revanth Reddy has taken the Huzurabad by-poll seriously.
He knows that it is too tough for the Congress to take on BJP and the TRS, as both are very strong.
But he does not want give up the fight just like that. He quickly mobilized all his forces in Huzurabad and appointed in-charges of the party for the by-polls in the constituency.
While former deputy chief minister Damodar Raja Narasimha has been appointed as the overall in-charge of Huzurabad, other senior leaders like MLC T Jeevan Reddy, MLA D Sridhar Babu and former MP Ponnam Prabhakar as coordinators.
Similarly, he also appointed two senior leaders, including former MLAs and MLCs, for each mandal in Huzurabad constituency.
Former minister Konda Surekha has been appointed to take care of Kamalapur mandal, the native of Eatala Rajender.
At the same time, Revanth also created a control room in Huzurabad to coordinate with all these leaders who would be working in the field.
Apparently, Revanth wants to show how different his style of functioning would be.
Though he knows it is difficult to win the Huzurabad seat, his objective is to ensure that the Congress would not only retain its deposit in the bypoll, but also sustain its vote bank in the constituency.