Telangana: BJP loyalists agitated over tickets to outsiders

BJP has announced candidates for 88 seats and of them, only 20 were given to long-timers, and about 15 to leaders who joined the party about five to 10 years ago.

Hyderabad: The BJP is witnessing widespread dissent within the party ranks over the party leadership giving a majority of tickets to recent entrants and turncoats.
So far, the BJP has announced candidates for 88 seats and of them, only 20 were given to long-timers, and about 15 to leaders who joined the party about five to 10 years ago. The rest were given to leaders who joined recently from rival parties. This has angered the seniors.

Except three sitting MPs – Arvind Dharmapuri (Korutla), Bandi Sanjay (Karimnagar), Soyam Bapu Rao (Boath) – MLAs M Raghunandan Rao (Dubbaka), T Raja Singh (Goshamahal) and Etala Rajender(Huzurabad) – former MLAs Endala Laxminarayana(Banswada), NVSS Prabhakar (Uppal) and Chintala Ramachandra Reddy (Khairatabad) and a few other like State executive member S Kumar (Dharmapuri), Payal Shankar (Adilabad), Rao Padma(Warangal West), rest of the candidates joined the party just a year or two ago.

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In fact, a few of them like former ministers Chittaranjan Das (Jadcherla) and C Krishna Yadav (Amberpet) joined the party a few days before the list was released. Even former minister Marri Sashidhar Reddy (Sanathnagar) joined the party a few months ago. Sources in the party said a large number of leaders and functionaries, who failed to secure tickets, were either planning to stay away from the election or were looking for better options.

The party old timers are also complaining that the leaders who joined the party less than three years ago were made national executive committee members and given important posts in the State committees. Whereas, several BJP leaders and functionaries who have been working for the party for decades were not being considered even for State level committee members.