Hyderabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party in Telangana state is struggling with the shortage of candidates for the forthcoming parliamentary elections. There are not enough candidates to contest about 10 Lok Sabha seats in the state, admits the state leadership of the BJP.
In 2014, BJP had contested eight Lok Sabha seats in Telangana in an alliance with the Telugu Desam and managed to win only one seat. Now in the 2019 general elections, the BJP is likely to contest 17 seats independently in the state.
After its failure in the state assembly elections, other parties are not interested to form an alliance with the BJP. Their candidates lost their deposits in 104 seats out of 119 Assembly seats.
Now in view of the shortage of potential candidates, the party will have to rely on these same old candidates who were defeated in the Assembly elections in December last year.
“It is a fact that though we have strong leaders for the Nizamabad, Secunderabad, Hyderabad, Malkajgiri and Chevella seats, we do not have potential candidates for other seats, more particularly in the seats reserved for the Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes,” said Mr Ramachandra Rao, a senior leader and MLC of the BJP.