AN ACTOR PREPARES
Despite facing several political setbacks in the past, an assertive Pawan Kalyan, aligned with the NDA, seeks the backing of his Kapu community for a strategic position in the coastal state
For a decade now, actorpolitician Pawan Kalyan has been trying to emerge as an influential force in the electoral politics of Andhra Pradesh, banking on his Kapu caste cohort. Despite a series of defeats and setbacks, the ‘Power Star’ is optimistic that his star will shine by playing second fiddle to Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu. Pawan’s Jana Sena Party (JSP) is contesting 20 of the 175 assembly seats and two of the 25 Lok Sabha constituencies that will go to the polls on May 13. Both Lok Sabha candidates and 10 of the assembly contestants are from his community.
Pawan launched his party in March 2014, but did not contest the elections that year. He rather joined hands with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), speaking alongside Narendra Modi and Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka, helping Naidu come to power in the first election of the bifurcated state. In 2019, the JSP contested in all 175 assembly constituencies, forming a bloc with both communist parties and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and was routed. Pawan lost in both seats he contested from, Gajuwaka and Bhimavaram, and his party’s lone winner from Razole later switched to the ruling Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP), which scored a landslide win.
Sensing united they could stand, Pawan, at first, struck an alliance with the TDP while the BJP held out. He worked overtime in aligning and addressing joint meetings with Naidu for about a year in preparing for the polls. Then, in recent months, in rallying to fight under the banner of the NDA, he conceded an additional Lok Sabha constituency to the BJP. His eorts have helped consolidate the alliance and the BJP is contesting in six Lok Sabha and 10 assembly seats.
Pawan believes the NDA can edge out the YSRCP given that both the JSP and TDP enjoy a 45 per cent vote share and need to add from the remaining 10 per cent to emerge the
winner. As part of this pragmatism, Pawan is contesting in one assembly seat—Pithapuram—abandoning the ones where he lost in 2019. In the long term, he hopes to use this election as a springboard for an enlarged post-poll political presence, considering Naidu, 74, has declared that this will be his last election whether he wins or loses.
Winning the Kapu heartland of Pithapuram in the Godavari delta may be a daunting task. The YSRCP has fielded Vanga Geetha, the incumbent MP from Kakinada, of which Pithapuram is an assembly segment. In 2029, Pithapuram was won by the YSRCP’s P. Dorababu with a 44.7 per cent vote share. Pawan’s advantage is that S.V.S.N. Varma, who finished second with 36.7 per cent, is now working for his win though Geetha, also a Kapu, is a tough opponent. To counter his political rivals, who brand him an outsider, he has bought a home in the town and announced that he would live there and work for the local people.
By tying the scarves of the TDP and BJP around his neck to symbolise the three-party alliance, Pawan led a two-wheeler rally in the constituency on April 23, coinciding with Hanuman Jayanti, when he went to file his nomination papers. “Jagan, an accused in more than 30 cases, is out on bail. However, after the elections, he will be in jail and this is Modi’s guarantee,” is his assertion in speeches holding up a placard with the image of a glass tumbler—the JSP poll symbol. “The JSP, TDP and the BJP have allied to assure people that law and order issues, corruption and anarchy prevailing in the state will stop.”
Beyond his tell-tale aggression and optimism, and the ongoing construction of the JSP headquarters at Mangalagiri in Vijayawada (until now in sheds), analysts are sceptical about his role except in bringing the TDP and BJP together. The JSP is largely a family enterprise. Elder brother K. Nagababu is the party’s general secretary. The eldest, Chiranjeevi, who donated Rs 5 crore to the party, sent a recorded video message to campaign for Pawan in Pithapuram after raising expectations earlier about touring the constituency.
“The JSP has conducted Jana Vani to receive representations from people in all districts. This, coupled with the 3,920 meetings and gatherings of Pawan Kalyan, has helped the party as an influential force,” says his political secretary P. Hariprasad. But, in last November’s Telangana assembly election, where the JSP fielded candidates in constituencies populated with Andhraites, it came a cropper, with seven of the eight contestants losing deposits.
“Though Pawan enjoys considerable clout in the Union government and goodwill of his Kapu community, the influence has dwindled after he joined the NDA and the YSRCP fielded candidates from his community,” says B.V. Muralidhar of the Department of Political Science, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. There are other challenges too. “The JSP has not struck grassroots. Pawan does not have the clout to sway voters in favour of the NDA. Winning Pithapuram itself is a challenge,” says social commentator A.M. Khan Yazdani.
Having polled 5.5 per cent in 2019 and travelled extensively since then, Pawan has the potential to draw substantial support from his community, which forms about 16 per cent of the population. “The JSP in a circumstantial political reality has been catapulted into significance and not because of its political depth or leadership prowess,” says Harathi Vageeshan, who teaches political science at the NALSAR University, Hyderabad. “In a way, the party is clearing some road for the BJP for the future.” Only the poll outcome with a vote share of 5 per cent or more will reveal whether the real Pawan Kalyan will sta nAdYu2p0.,n
PAWAN BELIEVES THE NDA, BACKED BY THE JSP AND TDP’S 45% VOTE SHARE, NEnEDdS TO ADD FROM THE REMAINING 10% FOR VICTORY
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 aord 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 datadriven governance. The findings have not been put in the public domain. According to previously available information, the Backward Classes (BC), which include 143 dierent 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 Bhu
vaneswari, 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 oered 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.
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 suers from an absence of a concerted eort by the three, which could undo NDA plans at the constituency level and in booth management. Inter-party dierences rose to the surface too, with the BJP demonstrating publicly on April 30 against the alliance’s common manifesto. The saron 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 aect 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 antiincumbency, 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 e¥ciently delivered welfare measures and Naidu’s charges of corruption and appeals for a last chance. Expect a fight to the finish. ■
THE ABSENCE OF COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TDP, BJP AND JSP HAS MADE TRANSFER OF VOTES AMONG THE ALLIES SEEM LIKE A MIRAGE