Chandrababu Naidu may delay declaring remaining party candidates  

VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister and TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu, who announced the first list of candidates for 126 Assembly segments on Thursday night, seems not in a hurry to declare the candidates for the remaining 49 segments and 25 Lok Sabha constituencies. 

Though the party leaders expected the final list to be out anytime on Friday, Naidu is intentionally delaying announcing the candidates to the remaining Assembly segments to stop those leaders, who were denied party tickets, from joining the Opposition party. 

Reliable sources told TNIE that the TDP supremo, in fact, had prepared to announce the candidates for 160 Assembly segments on Thursday night, but confined himself to announce 126 only. The reason being YSRC was still searching for candidates and waiting for the TDP to announce its full list of candidates in a bid to woo those denied tickets into the YSRC.

“Of course, there is dissidence in around 15 Assembly segments, most of them located in Amaravati region and Anantapur district. The TDP came to clarity on a majority of those 15 segments after holding parleys with ticket aspirants and prepared the list of candidates for 160 segments. But after getting enough hints about the YSRC’s strategy, Naidu limited the list to 126 constituencies,’’ a TDP leader said.

Recalling that the YSRC leadership had initially announced to declare the first list of candidates on Thursday and postponed the same to Saturday (following the death of YS Vivekananda Reddy, this is also doubtful), the TDP knowing that the YSRC was waiting to poach on the disgruntled leaders, delayed the announcement of the candidates to the remaining Assembly segments.

Meanwhile, dissidence in the TDP continued many Assembly segments, including Tiruvuru in Krishna district, Tadikonda, Sattenapalli and Mangalagiri in Guntur district, despite the party announcing the candidates.