Aiming for a hat-trick, the Bharath Rashtra Samithi (BRS) on Monday announced candidates for 115 seats for the Assembly elections in Telangana slated to be held towards the end of the year.
The candidates for the remaining four seats will be announced later, BRS President and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao told a news conference.
The BRS has denied tickets to sitting MLAs in eight constituencies, including Kamareddy from where CM KCR will be contesting in addition to Gajwel, which he currently represents.
Boath, Khanapur, Wyra, Korutla, Uppal, Asifabad and Metpally are the other constituencies where the ruling party has not given tickets to the sitting legislators.
Chief Minister KCR will contest from Gajwel in Siddipet district and Kamareddy in Kamareddy district. Gampa Govardhan was elected from Kamareddy in the 2018 elections. KCR said that he is contesting from Kamareddy at the request of the MLA and other leaders from the district.
KCR has not denied tickets to any of the ministers who were elected to Assembly in the last elections. His son and state minister K.T. Rama Rao will once again contest from Sircilla, while his nephew and state minister T. Harish Rao will seek re-election from Siddipet.
KCR said the candidates for Narsapur, Jangaon, Nampally and Goshamahal constituencies will be announced in 3-4 days.
The BRS chief exuded confidence that the party will retain power by winning 95-105 seats in 119 member Assembly.
The BRS had won 88 seats in the 2018 elections. Sixteen MLAs from Congress, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and a couple of Independents had later joined the BRS.
(With inputs from IANS)
