Hyderabad, Mar 4 (IANS): Telangana's Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) on Monday announced four candidates for the coming Lok Sabha elections.

Nama Nageswara Rao and Malothu Kavitha will seek re-election from Khammam and Mahabubabad constituencies, respectively, while B. Vinod Kumar has been fielded from Karimnagar, and Koppula Eshwar from Peddapalli.

BRS President and former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced the first list of candidates after holding strategy meetings with the leaders of the Lok Sabha constituencies during the last two days.

Vinod Kumar had lost the 2019 election in Karimnagar to BJP’s Bandi Sanjay Kumar. The BJP has already announced Sanjay’s candidature once again.

Former minister Koppula Eshwar, who suffered a defeat in the recent Assembly elections, will face Peddapalli's sitting MP B. Venkatesh Netha, who was elected from Peddapalli on BRS ticket in 2019 but joined the Congress last month.

In 2019, the BRS had bagged nine out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The party last week suffered two more setbacks as Nagarkurnool MP P. Ramulu and Zahirabad MP B. B. Patil joined the BJP. The saffron party on March 2 announced Patil as its candidate in Zahirabad while it has decided to field Ramulu’s son P. Bharat as the candidate from Nagarkurnool.