Congress Party has thrown up a surprise in the selection of Rajya Sabha candidates. Veteran leader Palvai Govardhan Reddy has been picked by the high command for RS nomination.
As reported earlier in these columns, Chiranjeevi and Renuka Chowdary are the other two candidates.
The fourth seat was allotted for sending party leaders from other states.
The AICC has made the announcement in Delhi.
K Keshava Rao, Dasari Narayana Rao and Sanjiva Reddy, the current members who have retired, failed to get renomination.
The Congress high command’s preference to Palvai over Keshava Rao makes it clear that the party leadership wanted to convey a stern message to the Telangana leaders who played truant recently.
Keshava Rao left no stone unturned to push his candidature, but to no avail. The party leaders from Telangana also made representations to Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy and Delhi leaders for Keshava Rao without any success.
Elected four times from Munugode in Nalgonda district, the 76-year-old Palvai Govardhan Reddy is dyed-in-the-wool Congressman. His contacts in Delhi and his support to the Telangana cause without crossing the party line seems to have worked in his favour.
Renuka Chowdary is a former Central Minister and presently official spokesperson of the Congress Party. She represented Khammam in the Parliament earlier, but she was nominated due to proximity to the leadership in Delhi as well as her oratorical skills rather than as a Telangana representative.
Chiranjeevi, presently MLA from Tirupati, was selected as per the promise made to him by the Congress high command before the merger of PRP.
