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Four Telugu Desam Party candidates and two Congress nominees filed their nomination papers on Thursday for elections to the six Rajya Sabha seats from Andhra Pradesh. The election is slated for March 27.
The TDP nominees for the March 27 election are: S M Lal Jan Basha (party general secretary and former Lok Sabha member from Guntur), Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy (party spokesman and former chief whip in the assembly), Akarapu Sudershan (ex-legislator and former chairman of the AP State Road Transport Corporation) and Ms N P Durga (a party functionary from Chittoor district).
A M Radhakrishna (TDP) also filed his nomination as a 'dummy' candidate.
The Congress has fielded prominent industrialist T Subbarami Reddy, who is a former Lok Sabha member from Visakhapatnam, and Nandi Yellaiah, former Lok Sabha member from Siddipet.
Both the TDP and Congress have kept regional aspirations and caste equations in mind while choosing their candidates.
Of the four TDP candidates, two are from Telangana (a Reddy and a Dalit of the Madiga caste) and one each from Rayalaseema (a Kamma) and coastal Andhra (a Muslim).
While one Congress candidate is a Reddy from coastal Andhra, the other is a Dalit belonging to the Madiga caste from Telangana.
A party needs 42 first preferential votes to win a Rajya Sabha seat.
The 11-member BJP group is supporting the candidature of the TDP's R Chandrasekhar Reddy.
The six outgoing Rajya Sabha members are Solipeta Ramachandra Reddy, Saifullah, Yarlagadda Laxmi Prasad and Jayaprada Nahata (TDP), Yelamanchili Radhakrishna Murthy (CPI-M) and Daggubati Venkateswara Rao (NTR-TDP).
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