Plagued by regional and caste biases of the former TDP government for the past five years the electorate of Andhra Pradesh seemed to have voted overwhelmingly for YSRCP without such considerations this time disrupting the calculations of TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu.
As a political analyst pointed out “The voters seemed to have unleashed their wrath against TDP, Chandrababu Naidu and Kamma caste.”
Not only Naidu chose Vjayawada-Guntur-Mangalgiri-Tenali for setting up capital city Amaravati ignoring the other two regions under the TDP regime, it was a frequent complaint from those of North Andhra and Rayaseema that all development efforts were concentrated in Amravati and the adjoining areas falling under the Guntur and Krishna districts which had the largest population of wealthy Kammas.
YSRCP, once considered to be a Rayalaseema party, while sweeping the polls has done away with all the charges of regional bias as it got 15 seats in Guntur and 14 in Krishna out of 17 and 16 respectively.
Moreover, Mr Naidu’s son Nara Lokesh, a Kamma, lost in Mangalgiri which had both Kammas and Padmashalis. The backward castes (BC) formed the traditional votebank of TDP was also breached this time by YSRCP.
Initially as reports of YSRCP sweeping the elections trickled in it was said that YS Jagan Mohan Reddy will take oath on 30 May at Tirupati in Rayalaseema region of the state.
However, Mr Reddy himself announced that though the date stands the venue of the swearing-in ceremony will be in Vijayawada thereby acknowledging it will continue to be part of the capital region and shedding his party’s regional bias if there was any.
Rayalaseema from where Mr Reddy hails also saw TDP wiped out from Kadapa and Kurnool districts while breaking the hegemony of Diwakar brothers in Anantapur.
Similarly, in North Andhra too it picked up all seats in Vizianagaram and did quite well in other two districts of Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam. In the Godavari districts the Kapus had overwhelmingly voted for TDP in 2014, hoping for reservation.
But with Pawan Kalyan who himself is a Kapu in the fray the Kapu vote got divided among the three parties.
TRS fails to win single seat
With BJP and Congress picking up seven seats between them Telangana Rashtra Samithi has failed to win a single seat in Hyderabad this time pushing it back to a position similar to 2014 when it was regarded more as a rural party in Telangana.
While TRS had an understanding with AIMIM for Hyderabad seat it failed to win the Secunderabad seat from BJP while Malkajgiri which constitutes the suburbs was picked up by Congress.
Secunderbad, a misnomer for a seat which is constituted with six assembly segment of Hyderabad city and one assembly segment of Secunderbad was retained by BJP although it had lost six assembly segments to TRS and one to AIMIM in the Assembly polls just five months back.
Malkajgiri the largest constituency also elected firebrand Congress leader A Revanth Reddy, an outsider by a slim margin although the lone Congress MLA under this seat had joined TRS a few days before election.
The only saving grace was Chevalla seat adjoining to Hyderabad which TRS won after a hard fight with Congress candidate K Vishweshwar Reddy who had left TRS for Congress following a tiff with the leadership.
Chevalla seat with rural and urban mix includes parts of the city’s IT corridor where TRS working president KT Rama Rao is quite popular.
After 2014 election when most seats of Hyderabad was won by TDP K Chandrasekhar Rao decided to spread his party’s influence within city limits by encouraging the TDP MLAs to join TRS.
In the civic elections two years later TRS won a hundred seat decimating TDP as a result of his strategy.