HYDERABAD: By giving their verdict in favour of the Telugu Desam Party in Nandyal byelection and Kakinada municipal polls, the electorate in both the places have shown the YSRC its place and sent out a message loud and clear to the party chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy that he has failed miserably in reading their minds.The way Jagan Mohan Reddy went down in both the elections has come as a shocker even to the ruling TDP given his high octane campaign in Nandyal and Kakinada. The difference in votes was as an unbelievable 16 per cent in Nandyal and about 15 per cent in Kakinada, a yawning gap difficult to bridge.
In 2014 Assembly elections, the difference in vote share between the TDP and YSRC was just 2 per cent with many TDP candidates winning the election with a margin of just 2,000 to 5,000 votes. Jagan Mohan Reddy, instead of closing the gap, seems to have contributed to factors that further widened it.
The denouement that winning election against TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu is more or less like a Sisyphean impossibility seems to have now dawned on Jagan Mohan Reddy who did not care to make any comment on the outcome of KMC elections. After Nandyal, a battle scared YSRC chief said that he was not down and out and that when he gets an opportunity, he would hit back at Naidu.
Though he started YSR Kutumbam programme at Pulivendula on Saturday to mark the death anniversary of YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the essence of which is to take the message of Navaratnas unveiled in YSRC plenary in Guntur district recently into the midst of the people, it was a low key affair since it came close on the heels of the two major setbacks the party had suffered.Jagan Mohan Reddy appears to have frittered away two great opportunities that came his way. Unmindful of what the fact that the urban voters in Nandyal and Kakinada wanted, he tried to inflame passions and resorted to spewing verbal venom on Naidu who over the last three years had built a reputation for himself that he works untiringly for the development of the State which had been mauled badly after Telangana had been carved out of it in 2014.
Though the fact remains unchallenged that voters in the byelections and civic polls would prefer the ruling party since that way there is better scope for development of their area, Jagan Mohan Reddy’s intemperate outbursts at Naidu appear to have not gone down well with the electorate. They seemed to have expected an incisive criticism of the policies of the ruling party with sound logic and reasoning rather than reeling off invectives against Naidu.
Now that the TDP has won both Nandyal and KMC polls hands down, there is no stopping the leaders who have already begun baying for Jagan Mohan Reddy’s blood. They are gunning for him and some even have challenged him to win his native Pulivedula seat in the next elections. Naidu said the TDP would remain in power for ever, implying that the YSRC is dead as a dodo, which makes one wonder if he is trying to sound like Lee Kuan Yew who developed Singapore into a global financial centre from a fishermen’s slum. “I will show what development is like. People will be surprised with the kind of growth I will bring about,” Naidu said after the KMC election results came out.
As the TDP takes an aggressive stand keeping the 2019 elections in mind, the situation is turning dicey for the YSRC which hoped that there would be anti-incumbency wave that would catapult it to power in the next elections. The fear more or less gone now, the TDP is in an overdrive while the YSRC will have to take a new approach to the electorate. His election strategist Prashant Kishor too could not help him much and in a comment loaded with sarcasm, Naidu said if strategists could script electoral victories, where was the need for them to work for others. “If that is the case, the consultants themselves could contest and win the elections,” Naidu said.
Jagan Mohan Reddy
may have to take a fresh look at the way he crafts his electoral calculus - his attempt to provoke people of different castes seems to have backfired because people do not want such toxic potions any longer. For instance, in KMC polls, Kapus stayed with Naidu despite Mudragada Padmanabham’s agitation who has YSRC’s covert support and BCs, who happen to be the TDP’s backbone, appear to have been steadfast in their loyalty though they were initially thought to have been rattled by Naidu’s BC status promise to Kapus.
In 15 of the divisions where Kapu population is substantial, the YSRC won only five, leaving the rest to the TDP, TDP rebels and the BJP. In 10 divisions where BCs, particularly fishermen, are numerically strong, the TDP won nine while the YSRC got only one. “Nandyal and Kakinada have paved the way for TDP’s victory in 2019. There is no doubt about it. It is a reward that people had given to Naidu for his hard work,” a TDP leader said.While this is so, Jagan Mohan Reddy will have to reinvent himself as a leader acceptable to the people since Opposition is sine qua non for democracy to flourish, not withstanding Naidu’s assertions that the State does not need any opposition. There is still enough time for the YSRC chief to rework his strategy and approach the people in the interests of democracy.
R Prithvi Raj Assistant Resident Editor, Vijayawada raj@newIndianexpress.com