Hyderabad, Sep 26 (IANS) The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) on Friday announced Maganti Sunitha as its candidate for the upcoming by-election to Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency in Telangana.

BRS President and former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) finalised the name of Sunitha as the party candidate.

Sunitha is the wife of Maganti Gopinath, whose death caused the vacancy.

The party said in a statement that KCR decided to field Sunitha in recognition of the services rendered by Gopinath to the party and the people and to respect the aspirations of the people of the constituency.

The announcement was a mere formality as BRS Working President K. T. Rama Rao (KTR) had already dropped hints that Sunitha would be the party candidate.

She has been participating in the meetings KTR has been holding with the party workers in the constituency for the last few days.

Addressing these meetings, KTR appealed to people to bless Sunitha.

The by-election is likely to be held in the last week of October or the first week of November.

Ruling Congress and opposition BJP have not yet announced their candidates.

Gopinath passed away on June 8 following a cardiac arrest three days ago. He was 63.

Re-elected as MLA on a BRS ticket for the third consecutive term in 2023, he was also the President of the party’s Hyderabad unit.

He was elected to the Assembly for the first time in 2014 on a Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ticket but switched over to BRS. He was re-elected on the BRS ticket in 2018 and 2023.

In the 2023 elections, he scored a hat-trick by defeating former Indian cricket captain and Congress candidate Mohammed Azharuddin by 16,337 votes.

In a multi-cornered contest, Gopinath had secured 80,549 votes while Azharuddin had polled 64,212 votes.

BJP’s L. Deepak Reddy was in third position with 25,866 votes. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), headed by Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, had also fielded its candidate, but he finished poor fourth with just 7,848 votes.

–IANS

ms/vd