NELLORE: The Nellore Rural constituency stands out as a unique electoral arena, characterised by a distinctive voter approach centred around evaluating candidates’ diligence.
Here, electoral decisions transcend traditional campaign paraphernalia. Instead, voters place paramount importance on assessing the hard work and dedication demonstrated by the candidates.
Nellore rural is a newly formed constituency in 2009 as part of reorganisation and the Telugu Desam has been losing the seat due to political tie up. For the first time, party’s candidate Sk Abdul Aziz has contested and lost the seat to Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy during the 2019 polls. Now, again sitting MLA Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy from TDP is contesting in the elections which would be a touchstone for performance of the party in the segment, analysts say.
In the 2009 elections, Congress candidate Anam Vivekananda Reddy secured the win against the Praja Rajyam party candidate Anam Venkata Ramana Reddy from the Assembly seat. Further, in 2014, the TDP failed to contest and supported BJP candidate, S Suresh Reddy, who had to taste defeat against YSRC candidate Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy. With Kotamreddy changing loyalties to TDP, YSRC fielded sitting MP Adala Prabhakar Reddy to retain the seat.
In both the 2014 and 2019 elections, Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy secured victories over his opponents, with margins of 25,653 and 20,776 votes, respectively, defeating BJP nominee Sannapu Reddy in 2014 and TDP nominee Shaik Abdul Aziz in 2019. He expressed his dissidence over the ruling YSRC after making serious allegations against the party leadership.
Further, after dramatic developments, Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy joined TDP in the presence of N Chandrababu Naidu and made his ground ready in advance.
On the other hand, Adala Prabhakar Reddy, a seasoned septuagenarian politician, embarked on his political journey by winning the Allur Assembly constituency in the 1999 general elections on a TDP ticket, subsequently serving as the Minister for Housing. He later switched allegiance to the Congress party, clinching victories in the Sarvepalli constituency against senior TDP leader Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy in both the 2004 and 2009 elections.
After a brief stint back in the TDP fold, Adala contested the Nellore MP seat in 2014 but suffered defeat in the hands of YSRC candidate Mekapati Rajamohan Reddy. Adala’s political trajectory took another turn in 2019 when he joined the YSRC and secured a resounding victory in the Nellore Lok Sabha constituency, defeating TDP candidate Beeda Masthan Rao by an impressive margin of 1,48,571 votes.