Absence of alliances among the major parties makes the elections difficult to predict.
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh, which goes to Assembly elections along with that of the Lok Sabha, faces multi-cornered contests in all the seats as all the major parties—TDP, YSR Congress, BJP, Jana Sena and Congress—are going it alone without any alliances. The Left parties, CPI and CPM, will contest together, but their presence is negligible as they cannot get more than 1% of the vote share. Andhra Pradesh goes to the polls on 11 April. Both TDP president and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and YSR Congress president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, who are the main contenders to the Chief Minister’s post in Andhra, are in a piquant situation as they are not sure of the impact of other players—actor-turned -politician Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena and BJP which is banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refurbished image following the airstrikes on Pakistan.
TDP, which contested the 2014 elections with BJP, is fighting the battle alone this time, spurning request from Congress for an alliance, though the two parties contested together in Telangana’s December Assembly elections. As a result, the Congress, which drew a zero five years ago, has been forced to contest alone, waging a losing battle.
There were frantic efforts between the BJP and Jana Sena to forge an alliance, but they failed due to lack of agreement on who should play the big brother role. BJP wanted to take at least half of the seats, but Pawan couldn’t yield to that as he is under pressure from a large number of ticket aspirants from his side.
Absence of alliances among the major parties makes the elections difficult to predict as the victory margins would be very narrow in most of the seats. The TDP, which declared 126 candidates on Thursday, is ahead of others in sounding the poll bugle, but large-scale defections from the party have become a cause for concern to its supremo Chandrababu Naidu.
Jagan had already launched his campaign from Rajahmundry in East Godavari district on 12 March and would be touring the state extensively from next week. In fact, he wanted to release his first list ahead of TDP early this week, but is faced with the problem of plenty as a stream of leaders from TDP made a beeline to join his YSR Congress. TDP leader in Lok Sabha Thota Narasimham is among them.
“If TDP is suffering from an exodus of leaders, we are troubled with mass joining,” remarked a YSR Congress MLC from Guntur district. This MLC two months ago was sure of contesting from an Assembly seat from the district, but now doesn’t know his fate. Naidu, too, had his share of defections into his party from Congress and YSR Congress, but it became a headache for him to accommodate them as he had already admitted 22 MLAs from Jagan’s side. As several of his ministers insisted on tickets for their children, Naidu couldn’t oblige some of them. Deputy Chief Minister K.E. Krishnamoorthy had to sacrifice his Pattikonda seat to his son, K.E. Shyam Babu, and Civil Supplies Minister Paritala Sunitha gave away her Rapthadu seat to her son, Paritala Sree Ram.
Another eight legislators, too, have decided to sidestep from active politics and give their seats to their children.
Pawan Kalyan has so far released two lists for four MP and 32 MLA seats and is expected to release the rest by Monday or Tuesday. He doesn’t have the problem of defections, but faces a peculiar situation as most of the aspirants are either new-comers into politics or not so well-known. Jana Sena is likely to split considerable votes in North Coastal Andhra, Godavari belt and Rayalaseema regions.
Pawan’s impact is going to be the deciding factor in Andhra elections as his vote share is expected to be around 15% in some pockets. The dominant Kapu caste and youth, mostly his film fans, is his vote base. However, Pawan Kalyan denies that he should not be seen as a leader of one particular caste. “Humanity is my caste and Indian is my identity,” he declared at a rally at Kakinada on Thursday.
The two national parties, BJP and Congress, are not on a strong wicket in Andhra, but the saffron party is confident of bagging considerable vote share, and as a result some seats too, due to the soaring popularity of Prime Minister Modi. AP BJP president Kanna Lakshminarayana said: “You will be surprised to see our results, we will gain a good number of seats across the regions.”
Congress doesn’t have much hope on winning more votes or seats, but the party wants to break the jinx of 2014, when it lost deposits in 125 out of 175 seats. “We got 1,300 applications for our 175 Assembly and 25 MP seats; this is an improvement,” claimed AP Pradesh Congress Committee spokesman Gangadhar and this time, the party wants to win at least one seat to make a presence in the Assembly.