GUNTUR: Both the ruling YSRC and the Opposition TDP are eyeing to win the Guntur West Assembly constituency in the ensuing elections and have intensified their efforts to reach out to the people. Guntur West constituency, in which the majority of voters are from Kamma, Kapu and BC communities, has never been a stronghold of any party for long as both the Congress and the TDP got equal hold on it.
Despite its best efforts, the YSRC had failed to grab the Congress vote bank in the last two Assembly elections and lost the seat to the TDP by a slight margin. Hence, the YSRC is determined to win the Guntur West segment in the ensuing elections. Sitting TDP MLA Maddali Giridhar had shifted his loyalties to the YSRC soon after the formation of the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government.
In the hope of getting the YSRC ticket, Giridhar has been actively participating in the party outreach programmes, along with local leaders Lella Appi Reddy and Chandragiri Yesuratnam, who lost the elections in 2014 and 2019 and later became MLC. Former MLA Modugula Venugopala Reddy joining the YSRC, came as a big blow to the TDP.
Following his defection, the TDP leadership had appointed GMC corporator K Nani as the party in charge of the constituency. But it has not yielded any positive results. Meanwhile, the YSRC had gained strength by winning 44 out of 57 divisions in the Guntur Municipal Corporation elections in 2021. The TDP had got just nine divisions. In the 2019 elections, Jana Sena Party candidate Thota Chandrasekhar had secured 15 per cent of the total votes polled.
Hence, the JSP is planning to seek the Guntur West seat as part of the alliance with the TDP in the next elections as it has a sizeable Kapu vote bank in the constituency. Meanwhile, several industrialists in the district are trying to attract the attention of the TDP high command to get the party ticket to contest from Guntur West, by holding various public outreach programmes. With the fast-changing political equations, all the major parties have their own strategies to win Guntur West in the next elections, a political analyst observed.