Former IPS officer Praveen Kumar is BRS candidate from Telangana’s Nagarkurnool

Hyderabad: The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) on Friday announced two more candidates for Lok Sabha elections.

Former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer R. S. Praveen Kumar, who quit Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to join BRS early this week, will contest from Nagarkurnool constituency in Telangana.

Former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and BRS MLC P. Venkata Rami Reddy will be the party candidate from Medak constituency.

BRS president and former chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced their candidature.

With this, the BRS has announced candidates for 13 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana.

Praveen Kumar had joined BRS on March 18 two days after he quit as BSP state chief. He resigned from BSP after party chief Mayawati asked him to break the alliance with BRS for Lok Sabha polls but he refused to do so and decided to quit the party. He had claimed that Mayawati came under pressure from BJP.

BRS president KCR had agreed to leave two Lok Sabha seats (Nagarkurnool and Hyderabad) for BSP following talks with the national level leaders of the party on March 15. The BSP had also named Praveen Kumar as its candidate from Nagarkurnool.

The next day Praveen Kumar announced his dramatic decision to quit BSP, the party which he had joined after taking voluntary retirement from Indian Police Service (IPS) in 2021.

After Praveen Kumar joined BRS along with several BSP leaders, KCR had announced that he would soon appoint him general secretary of the party.

Venkata Rami Reddy had quit his job as Siddipet district collector in 2021 to join TRS (now BRS). He was later elected to the Legislative Council.

The BRS had bagged nine Lok Sabha seats in the state in the 2019 elections. After losing power to Congress in the recent elections, the party suffered a series of setbacks. Four of its sitting MPs defected to Congress and BJP.