A long road ahead for Jagan Mohan

Two days before YSR Congress Party president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy started a six-month, 3,000-km padayatra from the temple town of Tirupati on November 6, one more party MLA crossed over to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the presence of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu at Vijayawada.

Vantala Rajeswari, who represents a scheduled tribe constituency in East Godavari district, was the 22nd MLA to quit Jagan Mohan’s party in the past three and a half years, bringing down the strength of the lone opposition party in the 175-seat assembly to 44.

A year ago, Rajeswari had alleged she was being suborned to join the ruling TDP. Her volte face had been timed to overlap with Jagan Mohan’s padayatra, seeking to build confidence in his leadership among the people and the party cadre.

The reduced strength in the assembly does not make much of a difference for the YSR Congress because it has boycotted the ongoing assembly session and also declared that it would not participate in the proceedings until all those who defected to the ruling party were disqualified under the anti-defection law.

The party took this decision after a couple of its members were madeministers in Naidu’s ministry this year.

Jagan Mohan considers his padayatra an antidote to the political setbacks that he has suffered at the hands of Naidu since his party had lost the 2014 election by a thin margin. He is trying to emulate his father, the late YS Rajasekhara Reddy, who led the Congress to victory in undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2004 after undertaking a 1,470-km padayatra in 2003, ending the nine-year chief ministership of Naidu. Naidu, too, did a padayatra in the run-up to the 2014 elections and won.

“The cadre is on the brink of losing faith in Jagan Mohan’s ability to lead the party to an electoral victory to form the government in the state. Whether his padayatra can achieve the intended purpose or fall short will be known only after watching how he connects and communicates with the people,” says D A R Subrahmanyam, former professor of Nagarjuna University and a political commentator.

The political space in Andhra Pradesh is largely occupied by two regional parties — Naidu’s Telugu Desam and Jagan Mohan’s YSR Congress. There is an underlying Kapu factor, based on a decisive vote bank of the Kapu community in a majority of the districts. Actor-politician Pawan Kalyan, who had contributed to the victory of the TDP-BJP alliance in 2014, is expected to consolidate this politically aspiring caste base.

According to Subrahmanyam, Naidu and Pawan Kalyan are a formidable winning combination that can come up trumps in the state with or without the BJP if the elections are held now. On the other hand, the electoral prospects of the YSR Congress depend largely on how the party is able to consolidate the anti-incumbency vote and rope in other smaller political parties, he says.

The poaching of MLAs by the ruling party and the humiliating defeats in the Nandyal by-election and Kakinada Municipal Corporation elections a couple of months ago have dented the cadre’s morale. The hearing in multiple cases filed against Jagan Mohan by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2012 has kept him on tenterhooks.

The YSR Congress party’s East Godavari district president and former MLA, Kurusala Kannababu, however, has a more optimistic view about his party’s chances in elections. “I admit that the ruling TDP is in a superior position as far as the election management strategies are concerned. But, we have started building a network of booth-level committees,” he says.

Continued implementation of populist programmes like social pensions is expected to help Naidu keep his wider appeal. However, resentment at many party MLAs, and, more particularly, the negative impact of villagelevel ‘ Janmabhoomi committees’, which decide who should get the government largesse in villages, are factors that can cause damage to the party, according to observers.

While the two regional parties have kept themselves busy in consolidating their support base in anticipation of early elections, the Congress is yet to find any traction with the people of Andhra after the rout in 2014. Being a partner of the ruling TDP in the state, the BJP did not make any aggressive moves to increase its influence, either.