Nagi Reddy’s demise may add to Naidu’s woes in Rayalaseema

The demise of 53-year-old Andhra Pradesh MLA Bhuma Nagi Reddy is not only a personal tragedy for the Bhuma family, but also a blow to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s ambitions in Rayalaseema, where his Telugu Desam Party faces a stiff contest from the YS Jaganmohan Reddy-led YSR Congress.

Nagi Reddy was the TDP legislator from Nandyal in Kurnool district of the Rayalaseema region.

The TDP had not fared well in the faction-ridden district in the 2014 Assembly polls, bagging only three of the 14 seats. Even Nagi Reddy and his daughter Akhila Priya (Allagadda) had won on a YSRC ticket, defecting to the TDP in February 2016. Their entry to the ruling party brought to the fore the simmering discontent among a few strong political families in the district: among them the TDP’s Gangula and Silpa clans.

For decades, the Bhuma and Gangula families have been bitter opponents. Gangula Pratap Reddy, a Congress leader with a huge mass following had switched loyalty to the TDP in 2014 but lost the election. The entry of Nagi Reddy and Akhila Priya prompted his exodus to the YSRC a month ago.

Naidu’s expectation that the hardened factions in the party would adjust to the changing political scenario post-bifurcation of united Andhra Pradesh, seem to be going awry. There are murmurs that Silpa Chakrapani Reddy (MLC) and his brother and former minister Silpa Mohan Reddy, are unhappy with the recent goings on centred around the future of the Bhuma family within the TDP, and the region. Speculation was rife that Naidu had been considering a Cabinet berth for Nagi Reddy.

Principal Opposition YSRC is a strong force in Rayalseema — the backward districts of Anantapur, Kurnool, Kadapa and Chittoor — where some forces are fomenting separate statehood protests. Though Naidu, himself from Chittoor, has been attempting a makeover with irrigation projects and industries, gaining an edge in the region will be a steep challenge.

Such is the rivalry in Rayalseema that YSRC chief Jagan and his MLAs kept away from Wednesday’s condolence session held for Nagi Reddy in the State Assembly.

Nagi Reddy’s entry into politics, in the early 1990s, was itself borne of drama: his father Bali Reddy was killed in a faction fight and his brother, the MLA Bhuma Sekhar Reddy, passed away at a young age in 1992. Nagi Reddy had kept away until then: he was away in school in Tamil Nadu, and later graduating in medicine from Karnataka as per his father’s designs to keep him away from the bitterness of faction politics.

In 1996, he shot to national prominence, reducing PV Narasimha Rao’s victory margin from the Nandyal seat to less than a lakh from the 5-lakh-plus majority he won in the 1991 elections. When the former Prime Minister decided to retain his seat in Behrampur, Odisha, Nagi Reddy won the by-elections that ensued. Over the next two decades, he switched loyalty to Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party in 2007 and then to the YSRC.

Tragedy struck in 2014, when his wife and MLA Shobha Nagi Reddy died in a road accident near Nandyal on her way back home after campaigning. She won the election posthumously. However, in the by-election, his daughter Akhila Priya won.

Nagi Reddy’s death due to a massive cardiac arrest on March 12 has orphaned his two children and set off new political machinations in Kurnool politics.

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