Hyderabad, March 13 (IANS) Tollywood actors-turned-politicians Vijayashanthi and Naga Babu were among 10 candidates elected unopposed as Members of the Legislative Council (MLCs) in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Thursday.
Vijayashanthi, a Congress leader and former MP, was among five candidates unanimously elected to the Telangana Assembly from MLAs’ quota.
Addanki Dayakar and Shankar Naik of the Congress party, Nellikanti Satyam of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Dasoju Sravan Kumar of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) were the others elected to Telangana Council without a contest.
Congress party, which has 65 members in 119-member Assembly, had left one seat for its ally CPI, which has one MLA.
Only five nominations were received for the elections scheduled to be held on March 20.
The Election Commission announced their unanimous elections after the deadline for withdrawal of nominations ended on Thursday.
Vijayashanthi, a veteran actor, quit the BJP to join the Congress party a few days before the Assembly elections in 2023.
She began her political career in 1997 with the BJP and later floated Talli Telangana in 2005 to fight for separate statehood for Telangana.
She later merged Talli Telangana with TRS (now BRS) and was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Medak constituency in 2009.
She joined the Congress party in 2014 and returned to the BJP in 2020.
Vijayashanthi, whose film career spans nearly four decades, has acted in more than 180 films in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi.
In Andhra Pradesh, Deputy Chief Minister and popular actor Pawan Kalyan’s brother Nagendra Rao Konidela, also known as Naga Babu, was among five candidates of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) elected unopposed to the Council.
Naga Babu was elected as the candidate of Jana Sena, which is headed by his younger brother Pawan Kalyan.
Kavali Greeshma Prasad, B. Tirumala Naidu and Beeda Ravichandra of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Somu Veerraju of the BJP have also been elected without contest.
The TDP, which is heading the ruling coalition, had left a seat each for its allies.
As only five nominations were received for the five seats, the Election Commission declared them elected.
Naga Babu’s election to the Upper House will facilitate his entry into the State Cabinet.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu announced in December that Naga Babu would be inducted into the Cabinet.
Actor and producer Naga Babu is the General Secretary of Jana Sena. He actively campaigned in the last year’s elections. He has been working with Pawan Kalyan ever since the latter floated Jana Sena in 2014.
Both had earlier actively worked for Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) floated by their eldest brother and superstar Chiranjeevi in 2008. However, the party came a cropper in 2009 polls and two years later Chiranjeevi had merged it with the Congress party.
–IANS
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