Kadapa vote for development or sympathy?

The massive majority of Ysr Congress Party president YS Jaganmohan Reddy over the ruling party’s nominee in Kadapa is ample evidence that an anti-Congress wave was very much in the air. It was just not a normal election but more or less a clear sweep intended to teach the rulers a lesson.

the recent Kadapa voters’ mandate made crystal clear that no matter what pattern/ issue was chosen to influence the mood of the masses, the rural man’s decision could not be altered. The ruling party’s newly found ‘ally’, the Telugu Desam Party’s nominee M V Mysoora Reddy sadly lost his election base.

In 2009 Parliamentary elections, he bagged more than 3.7 lakh votes as against 1.27 lakh this time around. So is the case of Health Minister D L Ravindra Reddy who also could not fare better in his own constituency – Mydukur.

It also sent a clear signal to all concerned that ‘material’ benefit was more important/vital than any agenda or direction or government’s ‘influence’. That the campaign trail unleashed by Cabinet heavy weights like Kanna Lakshminararayana, Botsa Satyanarayana, N Raghuveera Reddy, Syed Mohammad Ahmedullah, S Sailajanath to name a few did not matter to the Kadapa voter.

Kadapa’s defiant leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s win which was attributed to massive sympathy wave or sentiment by the Congress circles has been construed as a stop gap shield or an insulation mechanism. But the voter went by the result-oriented developmental activities as Kadapa district was transformed into another growth-oriented city with less and less of the bygone faction ridden politics which the locals hated.

Chief Electoral Officer Bhanwar Lal had rightly described the Kadapa voter as intelligent, by saying that he would chose as per the progress shown by the leader of the day and that the voter did not bend a wee bit when the whole lot of Ministers ganged up and tried to influence them. An able bureaucrat with robust common sense, Mr Bhanwar Lal always kept his cool and assessed that merit counted and distanced the fence-sitters.

The recent by-elections also brought to surface that not political legacy but the former chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy’s welfare schemes for poor stood the grounds for his son and hopefully henceforth uncontested political heir, YS Jaganmohan Reddy. It also proved that there was an anti-Congress wave which knocked out even the Telugu Desam Party candidate who the voters thought was hand-in-gloves with the Congress party. 

Similar situations arose earlier when former chief minister and TDP founder NT Rama Rao too received a landslide victory, and way back earlier after the 1975 Emergency, the Janata Party was given the mandate jettisoning the then Congress under former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Perhaps the Congress circles were also aware of it and so the Union Minister for Health Ghulam Nabi Azad categorically admitted after results trickled in that he had predicted much earlier the victory of YSR’s son in Kadapa. For this reason, the Congress leaders, in order to hush up their malfunctioning, quite adroitly issued statements to the effect that ‘sympathy’ still struck the Kadapa voter.

The Kadapa by-polls also brought to the fore several signals from the voters. The same wave if allowed to continue further, may spell doom to the ruling party and as much to the TDP whose prospects were bright till the other day. Normal elections or normal outcome of the by-polls would not have altered the grounds for Mr N Kiran Kumar Reddy or for Mr Chandrababu Naidu.

The astounding results have indeed wrought havoc and done so much damage to Mr Jaganmohan Reddy’s rivals.  As pointed out by Chief Electoral Officer Bhanwar Lal, the by-election’s outcome signalled that the ‘service’ part was loop lined by Congress leadership.

This apart, the voter was impressed that the mother-son duo were cornered by their rivals including YSR’s brother YS Vivekananda Reddy. The result was that YS Vivekananda Reddy also lost in the ‘bargain’ but scraped through managing his deposit.

In the same vein the voters were also not prepared to take credence of allegations of Mr Jaganmohan Reddy’s massive money laundering or massive accumulation of ill-gotten wealth with the connivance of his chief minister father way back.

According to a source, Mr Jaganmohan Reddy is likely to employ this anti-Congress wave and separate statehood for Telangana chord throughout Andhra Pradesh but it may meet a stiff resistance. What the Chief Minister had said is true.

Winning a solitary MLA seat out of 294 or a single MP seat out of 42 seats will not matter much. By the time Mr Jaganmohan Reddy takes a strong turn to reach his ‘goal’ his opponents may as well stall his march/progress, dragging him to the Law of the land on charges of corruption on various counts. The Courts will be functional after the summer recess.