Hyderabad: With its strong presence in the local bodies, the ruling TRS is eager to record a clean sweep in the biennial election after 12 MLC seats to be held on 10 December. The party, which is confident of retaining all 12 MLC seats, has a strong base of 16,000 elected representatives in the state at various levels from MPs to gram panchayat ward members.
The biennial election is scheduled to be held for the 12 MLC seats that will become vacant after the expiration of the term of the sitting members on January 4 next year. All the sitting MPs whose seats will become vacant belong to the ruling TRS. They are Puranam Satish Kumar of Adilabad, Pochampally Srinivas Reddy of Warangal, Tera Chinnapa Reddy of Nalgonda, V Bhoopal Reddy of Medak, K Kavitha of Nizamabad, Balasani Laxminarayana of Khammam, T Bhanuprasad Rao and Naradaso Laxnag, Reddy and Kair. Kuchukulla Damoder Reddy of Mahabubnagar, Patnam Mahender Reddy and Sunkari Raju of Ranga Reddy Local Authorities’ constituencies respectively.
The voters of the 12 MLC seats covering nine Local Government constituencies include MPTC members, ZPTC members, municipal corporations and councilors, and consist largely of TRS’s elected representatives. The ruling party has maintained a lead in the elections for both rural and urban local body elections, especially after coming to power for the second consecutive term in 2018 with a larger mandate of people from the state. The party increased its hold on state politics by improving its presence in all local bodies.
Among the rural local bodies, about 449 of 538 ZPTC members belong to TRS and all 32 Zilla Parishad chairmanships have been secured by the party. It also has 431 of 537 Mandal Parishad Presidents seats, with 3,571 of the total 5,816 MPTC posts in its kitty.
In urban local bodies, the TRS holds approximately 1,679 out of a total of 2,849 municipal ward member posts and 117 of 125 municipal chairmanships. The party also won all 13 municipal mayoral posts, apart from 333 of 661 municipal corporate posts in various municipal corporations. Of the total of 142 urban local bodies, the opposition parties, including Congress and the BJP, are limited to just eight municipalities of 138 ULBs for which elections have been held.
“The party leadership has already started the preparations for the MLC polls. Shortly after TRS President and Prime Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao finalized the candidacies, we will reach out to all our party elected representatives representing MPTCs, ZPTCs, municipal wards and departments, to consolidate our votes. The necessary instructions will be issued to all our elected representatives to cast their votes without delay. We also expect that some elected representatives of the opposition parties will support our candidates. We are confident that we will record a clean sweep in the upcoming MLC polls, ”a TRS general secretary told Telangana Today.
Source: Telangana Today