BJP plans to exploit Women’s Reservation bill to hide shortage of candidates in Telangana

Though the party received about 6,003 applications for party tickets to contest from the 119 assembly constituencies, a majority of them turned out to be non-serious candidates

Hyderabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party, facing a severe shortage of candidates with winning potential in Telangana, is reportedly planning to exploit the recently passed Women’s Reservation Bill and project it as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gift to women voters. This would hide the truth about the party’s weakness in the State and at the same time, help it gain some votes from women. As part of this strategy, the party is considering giving a large number of seats to women candidates, according to party sources.

Though the party received about 6,003 applications for party tickets to contest from the 119 assembly constituencies, a majority of them turned out to be non-serious candidates. So far, the party has reportedly managed to identify candidates for about 40 constituencies and does not know what to do to field candidates in the rest of the seats. Sources said the party leadership is now planning to allot tickets to women and Other Backward Class (OBC) candidates in constituencies where it is finding it difficult to get winnable candidates.

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The BJP leadership is of the opinion that allotting tickets to women and OBC candidates will help the party in getting the support of these categories. Already the State leaders have been directed to make the Women’s Reservation Bill, National Turmeric Board and Central Tribal University announced by Modi part of the party’s election campaign.

“Allocating tickets to a large number of women and OBC will definitely help the party in winning a few seats in the upcoming assembly polls,” a BJP leader said. Citing the example of Nizamabad MP Dharampuri Arvind and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay, who belong to the Munnuru Kapu communities, a backward caste community, the party leaders claim that the victory of these two leaders is an indication that BCs are with the BJP and giving more tickets to them could yield good results.