The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : 11 nominees file papers for Legislative Council polls

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Wednesday, Jan 28, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

11 nominees file papers for Legislative Council polls

8 Congress, 3 TDP candidates to be elected unopposed

— PHOTO: Satish. H

ON STRONG TURF: Finance Minister K. Rosaiah filing nomination in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

HYDERABAD: Eleven candidates, including Finance Minister K. Rosaiah of Congress, filed their nomination papers for the Legislative Council elections from the Assembly constituency on Tuesday.

Of the 11, eight were from the Congress and three from the Telugu Desam Party. They submitted their nomination papers to the Legislature Secretary Raja Sadaram. All the 11 are likely to be elected unopposed as the number of vacancies are also the same. Surprisingly, the Congress did not field another candidate though the ruling party and its allies have almost sufficient strength in the Assembly to ensure the victory of nine candidates. This enabled the TDP to field three candidates and win all.

Apart from Mr. Rosaiah, the other Congress nominees are -- Rudraraju Padmaraju, Peer Shabbir Ahmed, N. Rajalingam, K. Yadava Reddy, K. R. Amos, G. Thippeswamy and Singam Basavapunnaiah.

Except Mr. Rosaiah, the other Congress nominees are sitting MLCs and they got re-nominated as their two-year term comes to an end on March 29. The candidates were accompanied by the AP Congress Committee president D. Srinivas and all of them submitted their papers around noon.

On the other hand, the three Telugu Desam nominees, Nannapaneni Rajakumari, B. Venkateswarlu and B. Lakshminarayana Goud, filed their papers a few minutes before the deadline at 3 p.m. They were accompanied by TDP leaders and significantly, CPI (M) and CPI MLAs led by their floor leaders N. Narsimhaiah and Chada Venkat Reddy respectively. The Left party legislators also signed on the papers of the TDP candidates. With no contest expected, the fourth of the ‘grand alliance’ partners, TRS stayed away.

The Legislature Secretary told reporters that the nominations would be scrutinised on Wednesday and the results could be announced after the last day of withdrawals on January 30.

Present strength

In the House of 295 including a nominated member, there are 19 vacancies after Mr. Rosaiah’s resignation from the Assembly. It means the present strength is 276 and each candidate should get a little over 23 votes to be declared elected in the first round.

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