New Delhi: Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu is set to be elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh with the deadline for filing nominations for the biennial election ending on Tuesday. Prabhu today filed the nomination as a BJP nominee, supported by the NDA partner TDP.
Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary of TDP and former Andhra Pradesh minister and Chowdary’s fellow partyman T G Venkatesh, who too filed nomination papers at the AP Legislature here today, are also set to be elected to the Rajya Sabha. While Chowdary is seeking an election to the Upper House of Parliament for a second straight term, Venkatesh is going to make his maiden entry. Both are industrialists-turned-politicians.
The candidates were accompanied by Civil Aviation Minister P Ashok Gajapati Raju; TDP General Secretary N Lokesh, son of party supremo and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu; and AP BJP president K Haribabu as they filed the papers. The election, slated for June 11, is being held to fill four vacancies from AP.
With a combined strength of 108 in the 176-member AP Assembly, the ruling TDP-BJP can comfortably bag three seats. The opposition YSR Congress has fielded its leader Vijaysai Reddy as its nominee for the sole seat it can win.
His wife, Sunanda Reddy, also filed her nomination as a dummy candidate. She will later withdraw it, YSRCP MLC U Venkateswarlu said.