BJP to finalise Lok Sabha candidates in Telangana on 15 March; polls to be held in single phase on 11 April in state

Hyderabad: The BJP would finalise its candidates for Lok Sabha elections in Telangana on 15 March, a party leader said on Tuesday. The names are likely to be announced on that day or 16 March, Telangana BJP Chief official spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao said. [caption id=“attachment_5213891” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The Lok Sabha elections would be held in single phase in Telangana on 11 April. The BJP fared badly in the 7 December, 2018 Assembly elections in Telangana, winning just one seat, down from a strength of five in the previous House. Candidates of Amit Shah-led party, in fact, forfeited their deposits in more than 100 Assembly segments out of the total 119. But Rao said the BJP considers Telangana voters as smart and they would differentiate between an Assembly and a Parliamentary election. “I think voters of Telangana will vote for a strong, stable and vision-based government which is ours”, he said. Rao claimed that the Congress seems to be in complete confusion with “key leaders” of the party defecting to the Telangana Rashtra Samiti in recent days. He was referring to four Congress MLAs switching loyalty to the TRS from the beginning of this month. “They (Congress) don’t seem to have any weapons to fight the parliamentary elections. So, certainly the fight is probably between TRS and BJP at this point of time”, he said. The BJP won one seat – Secunderabad, which was bagged by former Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya – in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. It is interesting to see if the party would renominate Dattatreya with senior leaders vying for this seat.