Lok Sabha election 2019: Chandrababu Naidu has a lot at stake in Andhra Pradesh’s three-cornered fight
Polling for all the 25 Lok Sabha and 175 assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh is being held on Thursday in the second elections in the state after Telangana was carved out from it in 2014.
Andhra Pradesh will see a three-cornered contest on Thursday as the ruling TDP will seek re-election fighting against strong contender YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress party and facing a challenge from new entrant Jana Sena of actor-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan.
Polling for all the 25 Lok Sabha and 175 assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh is being held on Thursday in the second elections in the state after Telangana was carved out from it in 2014.
N Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party won 15 out of the 25 Lok Sabha seats with a vote share of 40.5% in 2014. The YSR Congress party of Jaganmohan Reddy secured better vote share at 45.4% but managed to bag eight seats only.
In the 2014 assembly elections, the TDP won 102 seats with a vote share of 44.6% while the YSRCP bagged 67 seats and 44.4% votes. A difference of just 0.2 percentage points separated the two parties.
The Congress managed to get just 2.8% votes, from a vote share of 40.7% in the 2009 election, and failed to open its account. The party that once dominated the state has now been relegated to the margins.
On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had a limited presence in the state earlier, won two seats each the Lok Sabha and the assembly in alliance with the TDP in 2014.
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Andhra Pradesh is historically home to bipolar politics and has seen a one-to-one fight between the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party until the state’s bifurcation. The Lok Sabha election 2019, however, will witness Chandrababu Naidu, Jaganmohan Reddy and Pawan Kalyan as main influencers. This comes after Jana Sena of actor Pawan Kalyan, who represents the numerically strong Kapu community with a considerable fan, came into the picture.
TDP president and chief minister Naidu will contest from Kuppam, while his son Nara Lokesh makes his electoral debut from Mangalagiri. Principal challenger, YSRCP chief Jaganmohan Reddy, will fight from Pulivendula. Pawan Kalyan will be contesting two seats in his first ever time in the election fray. He will fight from Bhimavaram in West Godavari and the Gajuwaka constituency in Visakhapatnam.
Kakinada Lok Sabha constituency in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, one of the key parliamentary seats in the state, will see C Suneel of the TDP fight against YSRC leader and former Rajya Sabha MP Vanga Geeta.
In Visakhapatnam, a Kapu-dominated constituency, the main fight will be between TDP candidate M Sri Bharat and YSRCP’s MVV Satyanarayana only. The BJP’s Daggubati Purandeshwari and VV Lakshminarayana of the Jana Sena are also in the fray.
Purandeshwari, who represented Vizag as Congress candidate between 2009 and 2014, is fighting against Bharat, the son of her brother Balakrishna.
Naramalli Sivaprasad of the TDP will face a tough fight in Chittoor, a party stronghold and chief minister Naidu home district, from YSRCP’s N Reddeppa. Cheemala Rangappa is the Congress candidate while C. Punyamurthy will contest for the Bahujan Samaj Party which has an alliance with the Jana Sena Party.
Narsapuram is one of the two Lok Sabha seats the BJP won in Andhra Pradesh in 2014 in alliance with the TDP. The fight here is among former minister and BJP leader Pydikondala Manikyala Rao, YSRCP’s K Ramakrishnam Raju, Jana Sena leader Pawan Kalyan’s brother Naga Babu and TDP leader V Sivarama Raju.
The Rajahmundry constituency, which saw massive agitations for Kapu reservations in the last five years, will see Maganti Rupa, the daughter-in-law of sitting member of Parliament and TDP’s Murali Mohan, against M Bharat of the YSRC. The construction of prestigious Polavaram project is key to electoral prospects of parties in the constituency, which mostly comprises Kapus, Dalits and section of Kammas.
This time, the election in Vijayawada is a clash among the TDP sitting MP Kesineni Srinivas, YSRC’s Potluri Vara Prasad, and the BJP’s Dileep Kilaru. All three belong to the Kamma community. The Congress has named Naraharasetti Narasimha Rao as its candidate from Vijayawada.
YS Avinash Reddy of the YSR Congress party and the TDP’s C Adinarayana Reddy will face off in Kadapa, the bastion of former chief minister late YS Rajasekhar Reddy and his son Jaganmohan Reddy. The constituency has a large number of Backward Castes and Dalits and the YSRCP continues to bank on YSR’s legacy and YS Avinash Reddy’s massive victory in 2014 was an indication of the party’s influence in Kadapa.
The votes will be counted on May 23 along with all the other parliamentary constituencies across the country.
