Former chairman of Telangana Legislative Council Gutha Sukhender Reddy filed his nomination on Sunday for re-election to the same post.
Mr. Reddy’s was the only nomination filed on behalf of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) which has 36 members in a House of 40. Of the four other members, two are from TRS’ friendly party Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), one represented the Congress and the other teachers constituency. Congress member T. Jeevan Reddy and the teachers representative Narsi Reddy also supported the candidature of Mr. Sukhender Reddy. This effectively sealed any contest for the post.
Mr. Reddy was accompanied by four Ministers - Mohammed Mahmood Ali, V. Prashant Reddy, Satyavathi Rathod and G. Jagdish Rathod - and twenty MLAs and MLCs when his nomination papers were submitted to the Legislature Secretary N. Narasimha Charyulu.
Mr. Reddy will be formally declared elected by the pro-tem chairman Syed Ameen-ul-Hassan Jaffri on Monday evening. After assuming his seat, Mr. Reddy will invite nominations for the election of the Deputy Chairman on Tuesday.
The TRS was reported to have proposed the candidature of Banda Prakash for the post of Deputy Chairman. He was a Rajya Sabha member who vacated his seat in November to get elected as a member of the Legislative Council along with Mr. Sukhender Reddy and four others from MLAs quota in November. All of them were elected unanimously.
Mr. Sukhender Reddy was a former Congress MP from the Nalgonda constituency who switched to the TRS in 2016 and was made State-level president of farmers coordination committee the following year. In 2018, he got elected to the Council and went on to become its Chairman. When his term as Chairman ended in June last year, a pro-tem chairman V. Bhoopal Reddy was appointed. Mr. Bhoopal Reddy’s term expired in January when Mr. Jaffri of MIM was elevated.
The prolonged absence of a regular Chairman for the Upper House was said to have been questioned by the Governor.
