For the first time, the monsoon session of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly will take place next month without participation of the Opposition. It would be a Telugu Desam affair and all decisions and passage of bills would be done without any meaningful discussion on them. There would be no way one would get to know about the other side of the coin.
This piquant situation has arisen after the YSR Congress decided to boycott the entire Assembly session on the ground that if it does, it would become party to what it calls the TDP’s unconstitutional practice of allowing YSRC MLAs be treated as TDP legislators.In a letter laced with anguish, Opposition Leader YS Jagan Mohan Reddy wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind seeking his intervention for the disqualification of the 20 MLAs and one MLC who have deserted the YSRC and joined the TDP and of whom four of them even have been promoted as ministers.
He conveyed to the President that the YSRC would stay away from the session since it does not want to be part of the mockery of democracy in the Assembly. Jagan Mohan Reddy also drew Kovind’s attention to the notification by the Assembly in which 20 legislators, who have defected to the TDP, were shown as YSRC MLAs, but they were provided seats among the treasury benches.
Jagan Mohan Reddy’s decision to boycott the Assembly session is considered his way of replying to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu proposing to hold the session in the first or second week of November. The YSRC alleges that the dates are being worked out in a way that would throw a spanner in Jagan Mohan Reddy’s preparations for his six-month padayatra, which he wants to begin on November 6. The YSRC leaders question why Naidu was trying to hold the Assembly session in such a way that it would clash with padayatra and surmise that it was intended to disrupt it and thus prevent Jagan Mohan Reddy from building a political capital for himself that might tilt the electoral scales in his favour in the electoral battle in 2019.
Naidu knows what a powerful political weapon padayatra is and the benefit he reaped from it for his State wide padayatra ahead of 2014 elections. Padayatras have become political instruments after the late YSR had uprooted the TDP with one such yatra in 2004. Till then the TDP was considered invincible. Though Jagan Mohan Reddy tried padayatra in a different form - Odarpu Yatra - after his father’s demise in an air crash in 2009, it did not get him much traction with the people since elections were quite far away.
Though Jagan Mohan Reddy’s sister Sharmila and Naidu went on padayatra more or less simultaneously with a few months difference, several other factors came into play, including the question of who is the better bet for rebuilding the reorganised State of Andhra Pradesh after bifurcation, helping the TDP chief walk away with the cake. Now, the question is who is playing the game better.
Whether it is Jagan Mohan Reddy with his decision to boycott the Assembly session and continue with his proposed padayatra or the TDP with its fresh strategy to paint Jagan Mohan Reddy as a leader who has no commitment for people’s issues and that he was running away from the Assembly afraid of not being able to face the treasury benches since the government was doing everything fine. One thing that is becoming clear is that Jagan Mohan Reddy is bouncing back from the humiliating electoral reverses he had suffered in Nandyal and Kakinada. His fighting spirit was visible when he said he was still waiting for the opportunity to hit back at Naidu and when it presents itself, he would make the most of it.
Before announcing the decision to boycott the Assembly session, Jagan Mohan Reddy, at the party legislators’ meeting, is understood to have remained very combative, not taking no for an answer for any of his proposals. He is reported to have explained how he wanted to administer the TDP a death by thousand cuts: “I want to uproot the TDP and not just defeating it in the elections.”
The padayatra that he is planning appears to be more scientific – he would cover all the 175 Assembly constituencies, spend time with people, sleep in their houses and understand their problems and what their requirements are. “The feedback I would get in the padayatra would form the YSRC manifesto for the 2019 elections,” he is reported to have commented with his confidants recently.
But Naidu is a seasoned politician and knows the intricacies of the electoral politics like the back of his hand. If Jagan Mohan Reddy comes up with one programme, Naidu always has something up his sleeve. If Jagan Mohan Reddy goes on his YSR Kutumbam - a mass interaction programme, Naidu had Intintiki Telugu Desam Programme. If the YSRC chief comes up with padayatra, Naidu convenes the Assembly session to disturb it.
Now that Jagan Mohan Reddy has decided to boycott the session, the TDP is projecting him as anti-people. In this see-saw game, it remains to be seen who will finally have the upper hand. One wonders whether the two leaders would stop thinking of the other even for a minute during their waking moments.