The AICC has announced Mahesh Kumar Goud Bomma and Venkat Narsing Rao Balmoor as Congress candidates for the Telangana Legislative Council by-election on January 29. Mahesh Kumar Goud has replaced Addanki Dayakar as the candidate. Dayakar may be asked to run for the Lok Sabha elections instead. The legislative council members are elected by MLAs. The two seats in the council became vacant after BRS MLCs Kadiyam Srihari and P Koushik Reddy resigned when they were elected to the legislative assembly. The BRS will not field any candidate, while the Congress candidates will file nominations on Thursday, the last day for nominations.
Mahesh Goud is a 58-year-old leader from Nizamabad district. He has been a loyal party leader since his youth and has held various positions within the party. Venkat Balmoor is a medical doctor from the Velama community and is the president of NSUI in Telangana. He gained national attention when Rahul Gandhi visited him at Chanchalguda Central jail in 2022 after his arrest for staging a protest at Osmania University.
The AICC has not yet announced the two names for MLC under the Governor’s quota. The Governor appears to be of the view that no names should be entertained under the quota due to a case related to the Governor’s rejection of MLC recommendations made by the cabinet when BRS was in power, which is currently in the High Court.
