Also read | Police pick up 26-year-old for hurling stone that injured Andhra CM Jagan ReddyFollowing the fallout with the Congress over the Odarpu Yatra, Jagan had floated the YSRCP and 10 years later formed the government with a landslide victory.
The Meemantha Sidham Yatra, starting from YSR Ghat in Kadapa and ending at Srikakulam, took the same route as the Praja Sankalpa Yatra.
Jagan has already dropped over 25% of his sitting MLAs, shifted some MLAs to other, safer seats, and dropped 60% of the sitting MPs.
The yatra also helped the YSRCP government fight the intense scrutiny over its failure to deliver social security pensions to beneficiaries on April 1.
The YSRCP is also expecting some sympathy vote from the injury suffered by Jagan after a stone was thrown at his bus in Vijayawada on April 15.
AS CHIEF Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s bus yatra comes to a close on Wednesday, after being on the road for nearly a month, the ruling YSRCP is hoping that the party has clawed back some of the lost ground on account of strong anti-incumbency against its sitting MLAs.
The YSRCP supremo’s high-voltage ‘Meemantha Siddham (We are all ready for polls) Yatra’ on a special election vehicle drew huge crowds, just like he did during his gruelling padyatra ahead of the 2019 elections.
Sources in the YSRCP said the bus yatra was much needed to draw people’s attention away from the party candidates to Jagan himself, to eclipse the hype surrounding the TDP’s tie-up with the JanaSena Party (JSP) and BJP, and to fight the likely damage from a split of votes due to Jagan’s sister Y S Sharmila fighting on the other side as Andhra Congress chief.
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Andhra Pradesh goes to simultaneous polls in the fourth phase on May 13.
When in doubt, Jagan has always taken the yatra route, be it the Odarpu Yatra (condolence tour) as a Congress MP after his father and former Andhra CM Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s death in 2009, or his 3,000-km Praja Sankalpa Yatra as a YSRCP MLA and the Leader of the Opposition in 2019.
Also read | Police pick up 26-year-old for hurling stone that injured Andhra CM Jagan Reddy
Following the fallout with the Congress over the Odarpu Yatra, Jagan had floated the YSRCP and 10 years later formed the government with a landslide victory.
The Meemantha Sidham Yatra, starting from YSR Ghat in Kadapa and ending at Srikakulam, took the same route as the Praja Sankalpa Yatra. The YSRCP ensured the message reached across the state, covering the march minute-by-minute live, with drone visuals.
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It covered all the 25 districts of the state, in addition to Jagan’s four “Siddham (ready)” meetings held earlier in Bheemili (Visakhapatnam district), Denduluru (Eluru district), Addanki (Bapatla district) and Raptadu (Anantapur district).
With the TDP-led alliance breathing down the YSRCP’s neck in many constituencies, what Jagan does to quell anti-incumbency will play a major role in deciding the outcome. Jagan has already dropped over 25% of his sitting MLAs, shifted some MLAs to other, safer seats, and dropped 60% of the sitting MPs.
The yatra also helped the YSRCP government fight the intense scrutiny over its failure to deliver social security pensions to beneficiaries on April 1. While the YSRCP sought to blame the TDP as it had approached the Election Commission over the disbursal, the TDP said the government could not deliver as it had run out of funds. Once the yatra started, the issue fizzled out.
The YSRCP is also expecting some sympathy vote from the injury suffered by Jagan after a stone was thrown at his bus in Vijayawada on April 15. In the seat, a Congress bastion which was one of the three constituencies the TDP won in 2019, issues like three-capital proposal, Polavaram project and lack of civic infrastructure development have been dominating the electoral discourse.
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Even some TDP leaders talked of a tough fight ahead. Lavu Srikrishna Devarayalu, the YSRCP MP from Narasaraopet in Palnadu district who is contesting on a TDP ticket from the seat, told The Indian Express: “The TDP has to work very hard for a fighting chance in this election. The BJP joined us but it has not been able to take any advantage of it.”
