HYDERABAD, 26 June — Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president, N. Chandrababu Naidu, yesterday released an all-woman first list of 54 candidates who will contest next month’s local body polls. Elections will be held for 15,709 local body seats.

Observers here see Naidu’s first list of candidates as an attempt to woo women again, as they had played a vital role in TDP’s victory in the 1999 assembly and Lok Sabha (lower house) elections. After administering oath to the candidates, Naidu expressed confidence that his party would sweep the polls.

Meanwhile, a rival political group fighting for a separate state to be carved out of the backward Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh has said it has collected 10.1 million rupees as funds for contesting the elections. The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), which has launched a campaign for a separate state, has announced that it will contest the polls alone, ruling out a tie-up with the opposition Congress party following its decision not to support the separate state demand.

Talking to reporters here over the weekend, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, the leader of the TRS and former deputy speaker of the state assembly, said 550,000 rupees had been collected through a fund-raising dinner, one million rupees from non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the United States and the balance from NRIs based in the Gulf and from TRS supporters in the Telangana region.  Rao said the money would be used for the party’s campaign in the elections to the local bodies. “This is enough to sustain us,” he added.

He said he was receiving requests from NRIs in the Gulf to undertake a fund raising tour there and added that he might send some representatives. Non-resident Indians in the US were also coming forward to help the party, he said and added he planned to publish the names of all donors.

Rao said he planned to address at least 175 public meetings during the campaign to counter what he called the ruling Telugu Desam Party-Bharatiya Janata Party (TDP-BJP) combine’s propaganda on the Telangana issue. Rao said the polls would neither be a referendum on the performance of the Naidu government nor on the demand for a separate Telangana.

 “There is no need for a fresh referendum on Telangana. The mandate was given in 1971 itself when the Telangana Praja Samiti (TPS) bagged 10 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats,” he said.