Former Telangana Legislative Council Speaker Gutha Sukhendra Reddy on Sunday filed his nomination for re-election for the same post.
Sri Reddy’s lone nomination was filed on behalf of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), which has 36 members in the 40-member house. Of the other four members, two are from TRS’ friendly party Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM). One represented the Congress and the other the Teachers’ Constituency. Congress member T. Jeevan Reddy and teacher representative Narasi Reddy also supported the candidature of Mr. Sukhendra Reddy. This effectively sealed any competition for the position.
Sri Reddy was accompanied by four ministers – Mohd Mahmood Ali, V. Prashant Reddy, Satyavati Rathod and G. Jagdish Rathod – and there were twenty MLAs and MLCs – when his nomination papers went to Legislature Secretary N. Narasimha was assigned to Charyulu.
Sri Reddy will be declared formally elected on Monday evening by ProTeam chairman Syed Amin-ul-Hasan Jafri. Sri Reddy will invite nominations for the election of the Deputy Chairman on Tuesday after assuming his seat.
TRS had 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 be elected as a member of the Legislative Council along with Mr Sukhendra Reddy and four others from the MLA quota. All of them were elected unanimously.
Mr. Sukhendra Reddy was a former Congress MP from Nalgonda constituency who joined TRS in 2016 and was made the state-level president of the Farmers Coordination Committee the following year. In 2018, he was elected to the council and became its chairman. When his term as the Speaker ended in June last year, a provisional Speaker V. Bhupal Reddy was appointed. Mr. Bhupal Reddy’s tenure ended in January when Mr. Jaffrey of MIM was promoted.
The Governor is said to have questioned the prolonged absence of a regular Speaker for the Upper House.