Kavitha back in politics, fifth from KCR's family likely to hold public office

Hyderabad: TRS supremo and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday nominated his daughter Kalvakuntla Kavitha as party's candidate for Nizamabad local body seat in the Legislative Council by-polls.

Kavitha a former member of Lok Sabha from Nizamabad, lost to BJP in 2019 general elections. She had won Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat with a thumping majority in 2014 general elections.

Since then, Kavitha remained inactive in politics. She has been keeping away from the party activities.

However, KCR's sudden decision to field Kavitha has brought her back to political limelight. Kavitha's election as MLC is a foregone conclusion since 95 percent of the representatives of local bodies in erstwhile Nizamabad district belong to TRS.

Only representatives of local bodies can exercise their franchise in this election. The last date to file a nomination for the MLC election is March 19.

KCR announced her candidature a day before the deadline. No candidate from opposition parties has filed their nominations so far.

Even if someone fields candidate against Kavitha, he or she does not stand a chance as Congress and BJP put together have only 5 percent of representatives in local bodies.

However, Kavitha's tenure as MLC will be only for 22 months until January 2022. This is because the seat which is going for polls has fallen vacant after the sitting TRS MLC Bhupathi Reddy was disqualified after he defected to Congress.

Kavitha will be the fifth person from the KCR's family to be a member of any legislative bodies.

Her father KCR, elder brother KTR, brother-in-law T Harish Rao are members of Legislative Assembly, holding the posts of Chief Minister, IT minister and finance minister respectively. Her cousin Joginipally Santhosh Kumar is the member of Rajya Sabha.