Why state Congress invited Gandhis to contest from Khammam, turning it into a hot seat
HYDERABAD: Khammam, which was just another Telangana parliamentary constituency, became the most prestigious seat after the state Congress leadership passed resolutions urging Sonia Gandhi, later Rahul Gandhi and finally Priyanka Gandhi to contest from here.
While none of the Gandhis accepted the proposal, the seat became the most sought after in Telangana with three strong ministers from the district seeking the ticket for their family members, and the Congress high command denying all three.
All eyes will be on Khammam when the 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana go to the polls on May 13. Congress has not won this seat in the past 15 years but has performed exceedingly well in the assembly elections. The grand old party has fielded R Raghuram Reddy, BRS has nominated its sitting MP Nama Nageswara Rao and BJP, which is trying to expand its footprint here, has fielded Tandra Vinod Rao.
The seat generated a lot of political heat with the three ministers, including deputy chief minister Bhatti Vikramarka, standing their ground firmly for a ticket to their family members. Even Telangana Congress president and chief minister A Revanth Reddy and other ministers in his cabinet went all out to request Sonia to field either Rahul or Priyanka as an escape route to avoid rubbing any of the three ministers the wrong way.
Of these ministers, Bhatti belongs to the SC community, revenue minister Ponguleti Srinivas is a Reddy and agriculture minister Tummala Nageswara Rao is a Kamma, a community that is financially & politically influential in the constituency and the district.
What started as an attempt by the state Congress to get one of the Gandhi family members to contest gradually turned into a difficult proposition to finalise the candidate. Both the party and CM Revanth were aiming to consolidate their positions after the party won 64 assembly seats, four more than the simple majority to form govt. Congress had won six of the seven assembly segments in Khammam, with CPI, a pre-poll ally of Congress, bagging Kothagudem, the lone seat it contested in 2023 assembly polls.
Even the party high command sat on finalising the candidate for the seat for more than a month after releasing its first list of four candidates for Telangana, and announced R Raghuram Reddy’s name with only a day left for the nomination. This was done after inviting Bhatt Vikramarka and Ponguleti Srinivas to Bengaluru where AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge brokered peace between them after settling the issue over phone with agriculture minister Tummala Nageswara Rao.
All the three ministers assured the party leadership of working for the candidate finalised by the high command. Raghuram is the son of Ramasahayam Surender Reddy, a former Congress MP close to the Nehru-Gandhi family. Raghuram’s son is married to Aashritha, daughter of actor D Venkatesh who is from Kamma community, his second son is wedded to the daughter of Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy. The grand old party is banking on Raghuram’s Reddy-Kamma link and its performance of winning all the seven assembly segments along with CPI, and even the support of the CPM, to win the seat, which it had last won in 2004. Political equations have changed a lot as Ponguleti had won this seat on a YSRCP ticket in 2014, later joined BRS and is now in Congress.
Though BRS failed to win a single assembly seat in this parliamentary constituency, it is confident of retaining Khammam as the party had won it in 2019 after victory in only one of the seven assembly segments in the 2018 state polls.
On the other hand, BJP is expanding its footprint with top leaders like home minister Amit Shah having addressed a public meeting in the constituency. BJP leaders are confident of opening their account in Khammam, stating LS election is a different ball game and that Modi’s magic, Ayodhya’s Ram temple and “double engine sarkar” will play a role in deciding the fate of candidates.