Hyderabad:�The bypoll buzz intensified in the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency on Sunday after Union minister G. Kishan Reddy visited a basti at Krishnanagar on Sunday. The constituency will go for a bypoll following the death of BRS MLA Maganti Gopinath.
On ‘X’, Kishan Reddy shared a video of himself walking through the narrow lanes of the locality, which were filled with silt and overflowing sewage. The Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency is part of the Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency, which Kishan Reddy represents.
Raising the election temperature further, Congress leader Naveen Yadav recently held a huge rally in Yousufguda to welcome Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and flooded the constituency with flex banners. He had contested the 2014 election on an AIMIM ticket and came second, pushing Vishnu Vardhan Reddy — then with the Congress — to third place.
In 2018, he contested as an independent candidate and came third, pushing the BJP to fourth position. In the 2023 Assembly election, he withdrew his nomination as an independent candidate and worked for Mohammad Azharuddin of the Congress.
Recently, former Indian cricket captain and Congress leader Mohammad Azharuddin also expressed confidence in securing the MLA ticket from the constituency. Additionally, Maganti Vajranath, brother of the late Maganti Gopinath, has begun meeting people and publicly declared that one of his family members will get the MLA ticket from the BRS.
Briefing the media, he stated that the BRS has already decided to give the Jubilee Hills ticket to one of his family members. Notably, Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, who previously served as an MLA from Jubilee Hills and is the son of senior Congress leader P. Janardhan Reddy, is now with the BRS. He joined the party ahead of the 2023 Assembly polls.
The municipal corporators of the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency have also started preparing for the byelection to earn brownie points with their party leadership. Borabanda corporator Baba Fasiuddin and Rahmathnagar corporator C.N. Reddy — who joined the Congress after quitting the BRS post-state elections — have been telling people to vote for the Congress as it is in power in the state.
While BRS corporators are banking on sympathy votes, BJP workers are actively praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Operation Sindoor and are campaigning vigorously for the saffron party.
The AIMIM is also expected to play a significant role in this constituency, which has a considerable Muslim vote bank. AIMIM’s Shaikpet corporator, Mohammed Rashed Farazuddin, received 7,848 votes in the 2023 Assembly elections and came fourth.
The AIMIM contested the 2014 Assembly election and secured second place, stayed away from the 2018 polls, and contested again in 2023, where it finished fourth but indirectly benefited the BRS. Meanwhile, wall posters of some independent candidates have appeared near grocery stores, salons, and other high-footfall areas such as markets in parts of the Jubilee Hills constituency.
In the 2023 Assembly election, BRS candidate Maganti Gopinath won the Jubilee Hills seat with a majority of 16,337 votes. Mohammad Azharuddin came second, BJP’s Lankala Deepak Reddy came third, and AIMIM’s Mohammed Rashed Farazuddin secured fourth place.
