Andhra Pradesh | A tough fight on Jagan's hands

The stage was set on a hot summer’s day in Hindupur, in the arid Anantapur region of Andhra Pradesh, where Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy made passionate appeal on May 4 to voters about the state’s controversial Land Titling Act of 2023. “Your child is a land giver, not a land grabber,” he said, referring to himself and what his rival Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has called the legislation that has sparked some concerns vis-à-vis transparency. “Beware of all the lies spread by Chandrababu Naidu out of desperation to come to power…. The Land Titling Act is a law made by the Union government by which farmers will have full rights over their lands…. Your child will make sure that farmers continue to own their lands and are not troubled in any way.”

With polling for 25 Lok Sabha seats and 175 legislative assembly seats slated for May13, the battle lines are drawn between YSRCP and the opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA), comprising arch-rival TDP led by N. Chandrababu Naidu as well as the BJP and actor Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party (JSP). No-holds-barred attacks are the norm in this double-barreled contest for political control of the state.

The previous evening, at a rally in Nellore, the TDP supremo had raised the pitch of the attack, terming Jagan Reddy a “destructor and dacoit”, and confidently predicting a rout for the YSRCP in the elections and a sweep for the NDA troika. “These elections are a fight between dharma and adharma, between destruction and development, a battle between the dacoit that Jagan is and five crore people of the state,” Naidu thundered.

The CM is looking for a second successive term, hoping that—with 38 state welfare schemes costing Rs 4.2 lakh crore reaching 125 million beneficiaries (many of them for multiple schemes)—around half the electorate will renew its support for him. Naidu has declared that at 74, this will be his last election and has made the emotional plea that he wants one last chance to set right the state that has been, he alleges, driven away from the path of development.

In addition to the bitter struggle between the YSRCP and the TDP, there is the combine of the Congr­ess—led by Jagan’s sister Y.S. Shar­­m­ila—and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI, and a faction of the CPI (Marxist Leninist) in the mix. They, too, have been taking pot­shots at Jagan, recently accusing him of frittering away state resources, and leading a corrupt and chaotic administration. By contesting from the family pocket borough of Kadapa LS constituency, a determined Sharmila has thrown­ down the gauntlet to Jagan. Her main grouse is Jagan fielding their cousin, Y.S. Avinash Reddy, the sitting Kadapa MP, who was allegedly connected with the murder of their uncle and former Kadapa MP Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy (a brother of late former CM and Jagan-Sharmila’s father Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy) in the run up to the 2019 election. While the case remains unsolved, Jagan has given a clean chit to Avinash and got a boost when the Kadapa district court ordered on April 16 that Sharmila and TDP leaders could not make defamatory comments related to the murder. Jagan, thus, faces two formidable adversarial blocs.

OPEN CHALLENGE: Andhra Pradesh Congress president Y.S. Sharmila campaigning in Visakhapatnam, April 28

For the two main belligerents, aggressive campaigning, with a focus on reaching out to a maximum number of voters, has been the norm. While Jagan is concerned about some pockets of anti-incumbency, Naidu is worried by how a perceived want of opposition unity—some sections of the BJP oppose the tie-up with the TDP—will hurt his prospects.

Some of the NDA’s worries would have been allayed by visits of high-profile BJP leaders, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. “The YSRCP government has crippled Andhra Pradesh with rampant corruption and it requires double engine growth (an NDA government in both Delhi and the state) for revival,” Modi said at a May 6 rally at Vemagiri in Rajamahendravaram constituency from where BJP state chief D. Purandeswari (Naidu’s sister-in-law) is contesting. Modi accused the YSRCP of pushing the state into a debt trap and termed the state’s irrigation and housing schemes abject failures. The PM’s three visits to the state were focused largely on drawing support for the six BJP contestants to the Lok Sabha.

The Jagan Outreach

Jagan’s campaign strategy for the LS and assembly polls was rolled out over four months. He hit the road in earnest only after announcing the names of all the contestants on March 16, though he did attempt to garner some early momentum with four massive regional Siddham (Ready) rallies, starting from January 27 in Visakhapatnam. The next phase, Memantha Siddham (We are ready), involved a 21-day bus tour of all 26 districts from late March with multiple meetings, whistle-stops and a rally at the end of each day. This was followed by Siddham Sabhas (readiness rallies) at select places to firm up support for the YSRCP and counter rival narratives. As a novel sideshow, the YSRCP deployed 12 common citizens as star campaigners to underscore its people-centric, welfare-oriented governance. The chosen persons spoke of how their families have gained from the schemes, termed Navaratnalu (Nine Gems) by Jagan.

On May 2, the CM unleashed the ‘Jagan Kosam Siddham’ (We are ready for Jagan) campaign in which over 250,000 party cadres spread out across 47,000 polling booths and visited most of the 16.7 million households to brief everyone about Jagan’s promises under the 2024 poll manifesto—Navaratnalu Plus. The manifesto, unveiled on April 27, eschewed grand new schemes and promised to implement continuing ones with increased allocation for some and a raise in welfare pension. YSRCP workers also reminded people that Jagan was the only chief minister who fulfilled all his 2019 manifesto promises and transformed the lives of beneficiaries. This saturation bombing, as it were, of the grassroots sprang from the confidence that welfare measures had touched almost all families at the bottom half of the pyramid.

The YSRCP has also taken care to carry all caste groups along in its welfare drive. “Through deft social engineering since 2019, the reworked social base for the YSRCP, beginning with a Jagan cabinet having ministers from key castes and cohorts, has meant that the clout of many individual strongmen of various castes is diminished,” says Harathi Vageeshan, who teaches political science at the NALSAR University, Hyderabad.

Caste Matters

Political parties can ill afford to ignore the caste balance. Indeed, under Jagan, Andhra was the second state in the country to carry out a caste census early this year. When accused of doing it to extract electoral advantage, Jagan countered that it would promote data-driven governance. The findings have not been put in the public domain. According to previously available information, the Backward Classes (BC), which include 143 different caste groups, comprise about 37 per cent of the state’s population of 49.8 million. The forward Kapu castes and various related groups are numerically significant too, constituting about 16 per cent. The influential Reddys (Jagan’s caste) acco­unt for about eight per cent, and the mercantile Kamma caste, from which Naidu hails, comprise six per cent of the population respectively.

Just as Jagan is balancing Reddys with other castes, Naidu and the NDA are relying on Kamma domination. Predictably, for the 175 assembly seats, the YSRCP is fielding as many as 49 Reddys, while 29 find their way in the three-party alliance. Again, the NDA has 35 Kammas in the race, as opposed to nine in the YSRCP list. There are 22 Kapus, too, on that list, more than the 18 in the NDA. In fact, the YSRCP has fielded more candidates from among the BCs and Muslims too—41 and 7— compared to the 39 and 3 in the NDA roster.

For the Lok Sabha polls, the YSRCP has fielded 11 BC contestants, and the NDA six. Among Other Castes (OCs) or general category, both have fielded five each from the forward Reddy community. The YSRCP has one Kamma and three Kapu candidates, while the alliance has fielded five Kammas and two Kapus.

Naidu’s ‘Assurances’

Chandrababu Naidu’s campaign also includes a barrage of yatras and programmes. It began last year, with the TDP first family covering constituencies according to a plan. First, Naidu dispatched son Nara Lokesh, a Stanford graduate and the TDP national general secretary, on the ‘Yuva Galam Padayatra’ (Voice of Youth March) from January 27, 2023, starting from his own Kuppam assembly constituency. The intent, as Lokesh put it, was to reassure the 50 million people of Andhra “who have become victims of Jagan Mohan Reddy’s corruption and anarchy”. The padayatra was immensely popular, despite challenges forcing Lokesh to pause, such as after Naidu’s arrest in September 2023 in the alleged AP State Skill Development Corporation scandal. In all, Lokesh trekked 3,132 km across 97 assembly segments to make the most of any anti-incumbency sentiment, before concluding the padayatra on December 20. Though he had narrowly lost the 2019 assembly polls from Mangalagiri (by 5,337 votes), Lokesh is confident of avenging that loss in 2024.

Even before Lokesh’s padayatra had ended, Naidu’s wife Nara Bhuvaneswari, the third daughter of TDP founder N.T. Rama Rao (NTR), launched the ‘Nijam Gelavali’ (Truth Should Triumph) tour on October 25, 2023 from Chandragiri in Tirupati district. The purpose was to console the families of TDP sympathisers who had reportedly died, “unable to bear the illegal arrest” of Naidu. Bhuvaneswari met 203 bereaved families and offered financial help. That Bhuvaneswari—who has so far kept a low profile, managing the Naidu family’s Heritage Foods Ltd business—decided to step out is being seen as a last-ditch attempt by her husband to wrest power. The Nijam Gelavali tour took Bhuvaneswari through 95 assembly constituencies across all 25 Lok Sabha constituencies before her tour concluded on April 13. To consolidate the gains from the tours by Bhuvaneswari and Lokesh, Naidu began the ‘Praja Galam’ (Voice of the People) campaign on March 6. By all accounts, he has made the most of it, conducting roadshows and addressing rallies till late in the evening.

TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu with PM Narendra Modi at a rally in Anakapalle, May 6 (Photo: ANI)

Realising early that the TDP may not be able to defeat YSRCP on its own, Naidu has since last summer cultivated an alliance with the BJP and the JSP, though it was announced this March. For 2024, the TDP has kept a major share of the seats—144 assembly seats and 17 LS constituencies—for itself, handing out only 31 assembly and eight LS seats to its allies.

NDA Blues

But not all is going well for the alliance. Analysts say that it suffers from an abs­ence of a concerted effort by the three, which could undo NDA plans at the constituency level and in booth management. Inter-party differences rose to the surface too, with the BJP demonstrating publicly on April 30 against the alliance’s common manifesto. The saffron party is also angry with Naidu and Pawan Kalyan for not featuring PM Modi’s image and cutouts prominently during their campaigns.

Add to this the abs­ence of coordination among the three parties, which has made transfer of votes seem like a mirage. There were other discor­dant notes too. While Naidu ass­u­­red four per cent reservation for Muslims, Union home minister Amit Shah has stated that the BJP was against the very idea—reason enough for Muslim voters to shift towards the YSRCP.

Protesting the disbursal of social security pensions—around 6.5 million people get welfare pensions amounting to Rs 2,000 crore a month—saying it can affect voter behaviour has also boomeranged on the TDP. The Election Commission of India has now stepped in, clearing the state’s payments due in May to beneficiary bank accounts. A staggering 96.7 per cent of Rs 1,945 crore to 6.54 million pensioners was disbursed to beneficiaries in the first two days of May itself. Those who did not get pensions through direct bank transfers were paid through the village and ward secretariat system. To be sure, it is advantage YSRCP here.

Political analysts believe that in a head-to-head contest between the YSRCP and the TDP, Jagan retains the edge. “The YSRCP social base was broadened through mass contact and welfare programmes, which would have cut into the TDP voter base among the poor,” says Vageeshan. However, an undercurrent of anti-incumbency, along with the perception of corruption in governance, may whittle down the YSRCP’s prospects. The CM, though, has played his hand intelligently. As social commentator A.M. Khan Yazdani puts it: “Despite signs of anti-incumbency, Jagan has won the trust of his Reddy community even as he implemented schemes for the needy.” On May 13, Andhra’s voters will choose between Jagan’s slew of efficiently delivered welfare measures and Naidu’s charges of corruption and appeals for a last chance. Expect a fight to the finish.

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