Party sources say except Dubakka MLA M Raghunandan Rao and former MP AP Jithender Reddy, none of the party MPs, MLAs or former MLAs and MPs applied for a ticket for contesting the assembly polls

Hyderabad: The BJP‘s entire exercise to invite applications to contest the forthcoming polls to the State assembly has become curious with all the party MPs, MLAs, former MLAs and senior leaders staying away from the process. The party had received over 6,000 applications from the ticket aspirants.

Party sources say except Dubakka MLA M Raghunandan Rao and former MP AP Jithender Reddy, none of the party MPs, MLAs or former MLAs and MPs applied for a ticket for contesting the assembly polls. Even BJP election management committee chairman and Huzurabad MLA Eatala Rajender has not submitted his application. Sources said that the party leadership has asked all the sitting MPs to contest assembly polls, but none of them applied for the party ticket.

It is learnt that State BJP chief G Kishan Reddy, Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay, Nizamabad MP Arvind Dharmapuri, Adilabad MP Soyam Bapu Rao, national vice president DK Aruna, former MP Konda Vishweshwar Reddy, former MLAs Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy, Chintala Ramachandra Reddy and NVSS Prabhakar have not applied.

Sources said that several leaders feared that the party’s peoples’ representatives and senior leaders staying away from the application process would send a wrong signal to the people that the entire process was an eye wash and that the party had already finalised the candidate’s list. They are of the opinion that the action of the senior leaders would have an adverse effect on the party’s prospects in the upcoming assembly polls.

It was disclosed that the BJP leadership asked Kishan Reddy to contest from his former assembly constituency Amberpet, Bandi Sanjay from Sircilla, Arvind Dharmapuri from Kamareddy, Jitender Reddy from Wanaparthy and Visveshwar Reddy has been asked to contest from Maheshwaram assembly constituencies. But since these leaders have not applied for the ticket what decision the party would take with regard to these constituencies one has to wait and see.