Indian elections: Chandrababu and Jagan to battle it out in Seemandhra

Hyderabad: Elaborate security arrangements are in place for polling in 25 Lok Sabha and 175 assembly constituencies of Seemandhra on Wednesday in what is being seen as a do or die battle for two top political leaders — Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N. Chandrababu Naidu and the YSR Congress Party president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy.

Election staff with electronic voting machines and other material have reached all the 40,708 polling centres in the 13 districts. The region is witnessing a direct fight between the TDP-BJP alliance and the YSRCP while all other parties, including the Congress, have been pushed to the margin.

With several incidents of group clashes between the supporters of the TDP and YSRCP already vitiating the atmosphere, 120,000 police and security personnel have fanned out across the region to ensure free and fair elections. They include 272 companies of paramilitary forces.

Both Naidu, 64, and Jagan, 41, have projected themselves as “fit and qualified” to ensure speedier development of the new state, which will formally become Andhra Pradesh on June 2, the appointed day for the inauguration of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Of the 25 Lok Sabha seats, in 2009 Congress had won 21 and remaining four had gone to the TDP. But situation dramatically changed since then with the emergence of the YSRCP and a majority of Congress MPs have quit the party in anger over the bifurcation of the state and joined the YSRCP. Same was the case in the state assembly. In 2009 elections Congress had won 105 of the 175 seats while the TDP bagged 52 and the actor turned politician Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) 18 seats. But many of the Congress MLAs were with either the YSRCP or the TDP.

Opinion polls and media projections suggest a close contest between the two major players while a crushing defeat was staring in the eyes of the Congress in what was once its most secure fortress.

If TDP wins even half of the Lok Sabha seats at stake in the region, it can be a big shot in the arm for Narender Modi’s bid to become prime minister. While Chandrababu Naidu was hoping to ride on his own personal image as well as the “Modi wave”, and the star attraction of film actor Pawan Kalyan to emerge a winner, Jagan was relying on the image of his father late Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, whose death had marked the beginning of the end of Congress.

Jagan’s entire campaign was focused on his father’s legacy of populist and pro-poor schemes, which he promised to continue. On the other hand all his opponents, specially the TDP-BJP alliance targeted him and his father as the “most corrupt” politicians the state had ever scene.

Even Modi, who undertook a whirlwind campaign in support of TDP-BJP alliance in the region, asked the people to choose between “Swarnandhra or Scamndhra” charging YSR with looting Andhra Pradesh to fill the coffers of “mother-son”.

“With me as Chief Minister and Narender Modi as the prime minister in New Delhi, Seemndhdra and India will achieve spectacular development in the next five years”, said Naidu who was making every possible effort to return to power after a long gap of 10 years.

While Naidu charged Jagan with using money power to buy the voters, Jagan made a counter attack describing Naidu as “worst liar”.

“Chandrababu was trying to cheat the people by making false promises which cannot keep”, Jagan said.

With Naidu going with the BJP, field was open for Jagan to woo the minorities including Christians and Muslims specially in Rayalaseema districts of Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur, Chittoor and pockets of coastal Andhra including Guntur. Muslims who constitute 6 per cent of the total electorate in the region were tilting towards the YSRCP not so much because of TDP’s alliance with Modi but because of YSR government’s policies including 4 per cent reservations for the minority community in government jobs and education, scholarships and other sops.

In a smart move to garner support of the backward classes and the Dalit, Chandrababu Naidu promised to have two deputy Chief Ministers from Kapus and Dalits. Though TDP has been in power for more than 15 years since its inception in 1982, the post of the Chief Minister remained in the hands of Kammas — NT Rama Rao and Chandrababu. It is the first time that Babu was promising to share the power with other castes.

He has already made the promise of making a backward class leads the Chief Minister of Telagana if TDP comes to power there. But opponents have ridiculed it saying he was making the promise because there was no chance of TDP winning in Telangana. “If his love and concern for weaker sections is sincere, why is he not offering the Chief Minister’s chair in Seemandhra to the backward classes,” asked the CPM leader B.V. Raghavulu.