CM KCR's daughter Kavitha sweeps Nizamabad MLC by-poll
Naveen S Garewal
Tribune News Service
Hyderabad, October 12
After a short political oblivion, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader and former Member of Parliament (MP) Kalvakuntla Kavitha is all set to participate in active politics.
Kavitha, who is also the daughter of Chief Minister K Chandershekhar Rao (KCR) on Monday, won the by-elections to Nizamabad Member Legislative Council (MLC) with an overwhelming majority.
She had lost the Nizamabad parliamentary constituency to the BJP’s Dharmapuri Arvind in the Lok Sabha polls held last year. But in the MLC polls she bagged 728 out of 823 polled votes, about 88 per cent of the votes.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the results after 10 invalid votes were excluded from the counting. The seat had fallen vacant after R Bhupathi Reddy, a former TRS leader, was disqualified after he defected to the Congress ahead of the Assembly elections in 2018.
Her nearest candidate Lakshmi Narayana of Bharatiya Janata Party polled only 56 votes, while Subhash Reddy of the Congress could get only 29 votes and another 10 votes were declared invalid. Both the Congress and the BJP candidates lost their deposits.
Right at the outset the trends were clear and Kavitha got 532 out of 600 votes in the first round itself. It is now being said that Kavitha might be inducted into the KCR Cabinet as a minister. Her brother KT Rama Rao (KTR) is already the working president of the TRS and a minister in the KCR Cabinet.
The MLC election was supposed to be held in March but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kavitha’s win is expected to bring about a major impact in the state that include calling the shots and sharing of power between her and her brother.
Kavitha played a major role in the Telangana movement through her cultural wing Telangana Jagruti and has been active in social life after she won her first electoral battle in 2014 when she got elected to the Lok Sabha from Nizamabad parliamentary constituency.