Banswada assembly bypoll on October 13

HYDERABAD:  The byelection for the Banswada Assembly seat will be held on October 13.
The byelection was necessitated by the resignation of Telugu Desam MLA Pocharam Srinivasa Reddy in support of Telangana cause. He later joined the Telangana Rashtra Samiti which is likely to field him. The Congress should be happy that there will be no byelections, except in Banswada, in the next six months to test its popularity. Had the Assembly speaker accepted the resignations of proJagan MLAs or disqualified some as sought by their respective parties for flouting party discipline, the Election Commission should have notified the byelections there too. But, since the speaker is still examining the resignations and the disqualification petitions, it announced the schedule only for Banswada. If the speaker accepts the resignations now, it will take another six months for byelections to be held in those constituencies. That's how the ruling party does not have to face the electorate at least for six months.

The resignations of 26 Congress MLAs and four TDP MLAs are pending with speaker N Manohar who has also started hearing the seven disqualification petitions submitted by the Congress, TDP and PRP. The speaker has already announced that he has reserved the judgment in respect of the resignations of TDP MLAs Nagam Janardhan Reddy, Jogu Ramanna, S Venugopalachary and K Hareeshwar Reddy, and assured the 26 Congress MLAs that he will take a decision after meeting them individually.

Irrespective of whether the Congress and TDP candidates will contest it or not the Banswada byelection will be watched keenly. In the byelections held in 12 constituencies in 2010, the Congress and the TDP lost their deposits. The then PCC chief D Srinivas too tasted defeat at the hands of BJP's Y Laxminarayana in the Nizamabad constituency.