State of Play. Sewing up alliances with TDP and Jana Sena, BJP in sweet spot in AP

Andhra Pradesh presents a picture of delicious irony wherein the BJP, which had not won a single seat and ended up with just 0.9 per cent of the popular vote in the 2019 general elections, is in a sweet spot. The saffron party has a pliant and possible post-poll ally in the ruling YSRCP and it has stitched up a lucrative alliance with the opposition TDP.

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For the 74-year-old TDP President N Chandrababu Naidu, the polls are a do-or-die battle as he got wiped out in the 2019 elections in which YSRCP won 22 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats and 151 (out of 175) Assembly seats, securing 49.96 per cent votes. The TDP had to settle for just 23 Assembly seats, securing 39.2 per cent vote share, and three Lok Sabha seats.

Jana Sena, whose President Pawan Kalyan was defeated in both the seats that he contested, won one Assembly seat by securing 6.78 p.c. of votes.

After this humiliation, Naidu knocked on the BJP’s doors and made desperate attempts to convince them to join the alliance in the State. The BJP, however, kept Naidu waiting for a long time. The reason for this is that after the BJP-TDP alliance fought the 2014 elections together, their relationship had soured. The alliance had won the 2014 elections with 106 seats by securing 46.86 per cent votes and the YSRCP had to settle for 67 seats with two percentage points lesser vote share. But subsequently, the two turned on each other.

According to political analyst D Papa Rao, this was an “uneasy” phase for the alliance. “Both had criticised the other bitterly. While Narendra Modi had alleged that the TDP Government used the Polavaram project as “an ATM”, Naidu criticised Modi for not doing anything for the State,” he said. Naidu walked out of the NDA alliance in 2018.

However, after having been routed in the 2019 elections and facing political irrelevance, Naidu started wooing the BJP again. For the BJP, what tipped the scales in Naidu’s favour was that Jagan Mohan Reddy had become unpopular by then. As Naidu summed up in the Chilkaluripet public meeting last week, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself attended along with alliance partner Pawan Kalyan, Jagan Mohan Reddy has “mismanaged” the State. “There are no roads, no development and no jobs in Andhra Pradesh,” Naidu asserted.

The Jagan Reddy government is widely believed to have antagonised urban voters, government employees and pensioners. The party neglected infrastructure and government employees and pensioners by inordinate delays in payment of salaries and pensions.

Caste composition

Reddy, on his part, has prepped for the elections. On the same day that the Election Commission announced the poll schedule, Reddy released the list of candidates for all the Assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats. He denied tickets to several sitting MLAs and MPs, who quickly got in touch with the TDP and switched sides.

The list contains the names of castes each of the candidates belonged to. It allocated 100 seats for candidates belonging to the SC, ST, BC and minority communities as against 89 in the 2019 elections. For the Lok Sabha seats, it set apart 16 seats for these categories.

The TDP-Jana Sena-BJP is yet to announce candidates for all the seats. It is believed that for the Assembly, TDP is contesting 144 seats, the Jana Sena 21 and BJP will be allocated 10 seats.

Campaign trail

The State is set for a high-decibel campaign trail. YSRCP announced that Jagan Reddy would kick off the poll campaign with a 21-day bus yatra beginning March 26. Following the bus campaign, Jagan would address public meetings in different parts of the State.

While it is only Jagan who is going to bear the burden of the campaign for the ruling party, the TDP-Janasena-BJP alliance has a battery of campaigners, which includes Naidu, Pawan Kalyan, Naidu’s son Nara Lokesh, his wife Bhuvaneshwari, brother-in-law (film actor) Balakrishna and BJP’s national leaders.

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Meanwhile, YS Sharmila, the daughter of the late Rajasekhara Reddy, who fell out with her brother and CM Jagan Reddy, too has launched a blistering attack on the YSRCP, alleging that the party has ruined the State. Sharmila, the newly-appointed Pradesh Congress Committee President, has been given the mandate of reviving the party that was routed out from the State. The State’s voters punished the party holding it responsible for the bifurcation of the State. All the vote share has gone to Jagan.

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