The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) will field G. Vijaya Kumari, wife of the late Lok Sabha speaker G.M.C. Balayogi, for the Amalapuram Lok Sabha by-election on May 30. The seat fell vacant after Balayogi died in a helicopter crash.

The TDP will make a formal announcement as soon as the party chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu informs party politicians from East Godavari district about his decision.

But the Congress party said its choice of a candidate would be left to the party's high command. State party chief M. Satyanarayana Rao said he had appraised party president Sonia Gandhi in Andhra Pradesh last week and told her the state party's opinion would be conveyed after it was discussed locally.

Sources in the TDP said Vijaya Kumari was reluctant at first to accept the candidature and agreed to contest only last week. The Balayogi family wanted the former Lok Sabha speaker sister B. Suryakantam to contest the election.

On Monday, Naidu asked Satyanarayana Rao if the Congress party would put up a candidate in Amalapuram, because the party had said earlier that it would not contest by-elections in another unrelated case where a state legislator was killed by Naxalites.

When the popular Congress party legislator Ragya Naik, a tribal, was killed by Naxalites, Naidu agreed to the request of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) chief Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy not to contest against the Congress in the by-election to Devarakonda. The TDP has an overwhelming majority in the state assembly.

The CLP chief had at that time said the Congress party would in future not field candidates against the TDP if its legislators or MPs died in Naxalite attacks or factional fighting.

The Congress party has clarified there was no comparison between the killing of the Devarakonda legislator by Naxalites and the death of the MP in a helicopter crash.