Telangana Assembly Elections: Congress, TDP release first list of candidates

Hyderabad: The Congress on Monday night released its first list of 65 candidates for the December 7 Telangana Assembly polls, with state party chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy to contest from the Huzurnagar constituency. Its ally, Telugu Desam Party which is a part of the "grand alliance" also released its first list of nine candidates. The list was released after a marathon meeting of the party's Central Election Committee (CEC) chaired by party president Rahul Gandhi.  The list was released late at night by CEC General Secretary Mukul Wasnik. The Congress is seeking to upstage K Chandrashekar Rao-led Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in the southern state. It also struck an electoral understanding on various seats with Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which was an ally of the ruling NDA, had walked out of the ruling alliance some time ago over the issue of the Centre not granting special status to Andhra Pradesh. Naidu is now meeting various opposition leaders and is seeking to be a part of a united front of various parties to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The candidates announced by the TDP include - Nama Nageswara Rao (Khammam assembly constituency), Revuri Prakash Reddy (Warangal West), S Venkata Veeraiah (Sattupalli), Kothakota Dayakar Reddy (Maktal), Erra Sekhar (Mahabubnagar), T Veerender Goud (Uppal), Bhavya Anand Prasad (Serilingampalli), Machha Nageswara Rao (Aswaraopet) and Muzaffar Ali Khan (Malakpet), according to a TDP media release issued Monday midnight. The process of filing nominations began Monday with the Election Commission issuing a notification in this regard.