Hyderabad: Ending intense sudden suspense, amidst fast political developments, the Congress Party has finally fielded former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir from the Nizamabad Urban Assembly constituency.
The Congress on Monday evening released its third list of 16 candidates for the upcoming Telangana Assembly elections.
The Congress high command delayed the Nizamabad urban seat for caste equations as it was linked with BC and Minority quota adjustment.
It was believed that if the Nizamabad Urban seat goes to Munnuru Kapu then the Karimnagar seat would be allocated to a Muslim or vice versa.
The list also includes the name of Purumalla Srinivas from the Karimnagar Assembly constituency. Srinivas, who is said to have a considerable support base among Muslims in Karimnagar, belongs to the Munnuru Kapu caste.
Interestingly, BJP National General Secretary Bandi Sanjay and Telangana civil supplies minister Gangula Kamalaker are both from the Munnuru Kapu caste.
Ever since PCC chief A Revanth Reddy announced that he would fight the poll battle against chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao in Kamareddy, speculation has been rife that Kamareddy’s strongman Shabbir Ali would be shifted to Nizamabad Urban.
BRS incumbent MLA from Kamareddy, Gampa Govardhan is facing public wrath for several reasons the main being the classification of the town masterplan. Many in political circles are of the opinion that Shabbir Ali is likely to win easily. However, Govardhan announced that would not run for elections and requested KCR to contest from Kamareddy.
This is the second seat that KCR is contesting besides Gajwel in the neighbouring Siddipet district.
Shabbir Ali is the sole Muslim face and also the only strong candidate from the Muslim community outside of Hyderabad with winning chances, however, with the entry of KCR to Kamareddy, the lone probable winning candidate’s chances shrink.
Shabbir Ali is scheduled to visit Nizamabad on Tuesday and is likely to file his nomination papers on Thursday, according to sources.
Nizamabad voters
Nizamabad Urban Assembly constituency is one of the prominent segments where Muslim voters are known as a deciding factor for the winner. The Muslims comprise 1.2 lakh out of 1.9 lakh total registered voters.
Munnuru Kapu is another ethnic block with the largest block of voters followed by Muslims and Vyshya is the other dominant caste in the city. Though Muslims form the majority of voters, only twice a Muslim was elected as MLA from Nizamabad in the first assembly elections in 1952 and 1957, since there were no Muslims elected.
Munnuru Kapu numerically is less compared with Muslims, yet it holds the seat for a long time in TDP and Congress governments.
D. Srinivas, former PCC president, Munnuru Kapu won the seat several times from Congress. Earlier in the TDP regime D. Satyanarayana of the same caste was also elected as MLA.
In a separate Telangana wave, the seat was won by BJP’s Y. Laxminarayana of the Munnuru Kapu caste. He won the seat in 2009 by-elections and 2010 general elections.
BRS struggles in Nizamabad
Incumbent Nizamabad Urban MLA Bigala Ganesh of BRS is facing a difficult task to be elected again for the third time, hattrick.
Ganesh, who belongs to the Vyshya community, with the support of Majlis defeated his nearest rival Tahir bin Hamdan of Congress with 26055 votes in the 2018 elections. Then TRS, now BRS’s Ganesh Gupta secured 71,397 votes, Congress’s Tahir bin Hamdan polled 45,342 votes and BJP got 23,000 votes.
In the 2014 general elections, TRS polled 42,148 votes thus Ganesh won for the first time with a margin of 10,308 votes against Majlis candidate Mir Majaz Ali Shaikh. In a surprising swing, Majlis came second with 31,840 votes and BJP third with 28,301 votes while Congress was pushed to fourth position with 25,742 votes.
Bodhan is another Assembly constituency that falls under the Nizamabad district. Incumbent MLA Shakeel Amer is fighting again on behalf of BRS. Against this backdrop, Shabbir Ali’s candidature from Nizamabad urban garnered considerable attention from people.
