Hyderabad, Oct 10 (IANS) The process to finalise the candidate of the BJP for the upcoming bye-election to Jubilee Hills Assembly seat entered the final phase on Friday.

The election committee of the BJP’s Telangana unit held a meeting on Friday to finalise three names. The list will be sent to the party’s central leadership, which will announced the candidate.

Presided over by the state BJP president N. Ramchander Rao, the meeting was attended by Union Minister for Coal and Mines G. Kishan Reddy, MP K. Laxman and the party’s state general secretary Chandrasekhar Tiwari.

Ramchander Rao presented the report of the three-member committee, which shortlisted five names.

The election committee will select three names in the order of priority and forward it to the party high command.

M. Dharma Rao, a member of the three-member committee, said that the BJP candidate will be announced in a couple of days.

The panel constituted by state BJP chief consulted 44 leaders from the division level and above and forwarded six shortlisted names to the state leadership. The list was presented before the election committee on Friday.

The names of Lankala Deepak Reddy, who was the party candidate from the same constituency in 2023 elections, Juturu Keerthi Reddy and Veerapaneni Padma are likely to be sent to the high command.

The list prepared by the three-member committee included backward classes leader Akula Padma and Atluri Ramakrishna.

The ruling Congress party and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) have already announced their candidates for the November 11 bye-election.

While the Congress party has named Naveen Yadav as its candidate, the BRS had decided to field Maganti Sunita, wife of Maganti Gopinath, whose death necessitated the bypoll.

In the 2023 elections, Gopinath of BRS had 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 at third position with 25,866 votes. The 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.

As per the schedule announced by the Election Commission of India on Monday, the official notification for the bye-election will be issued on October 13, while the last date for filing nominations is October 21. Scrutiny of nominations will be held on October 22, and withdrawal of candidature will be allowed until October 24.

Counting of votes will take place on November 14, and the election process will be completed by November 16, 2025.

–IANS

ms/rad