Mandali Buddha Prasad is JSP candidate from Avanigadda, Pawan Kalyan replaces candidate in Railway Kodur

VIJAYAWADA: Jana Sena Party (JSP) president Pawan Kalyan has nominated former Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and former Minister Mandali Buddha Prasad as the party candidate for Avanigadda constituency, three days after he joined the party in Pithapuram.

Pawan also replaced Yanamala Bhaskar Rao with Arava Sridhar in the Railway Kodur constituency following negative feedback received about Bhaskar Rao’s candidature. The JSP candidate for Palakonda constituency would be announced in a couple of days.

Son of Congress stalwart Mandali Venkata Krishna Rao, Buddha Prasad was elected from Avanigadda thrice in 1999 and 2004 as Congress candidate and in 2014 from the TDP.

He would be facing sitting MLA Simhadri Ramesh Babu of the YSRCP, to whom he lost in 2019 by a majority of nearly 21,000 votes, and Ande Srirama Murthy of the Congress party.

Meanwhile, Sridhar would confront sitting YSRCP MLA Koramutla Sreenivasulu and Congress party’s Gosala Devi in Railway Kodur. Sreenivasulu had defeated TDP’s P Narasimha Prasad by an approximate margin of 35,000 votes in 2019.