Opinion An uncertain contest
The bypolls in Andhra Pradesh are a big battle for YSRs legacy.
In the chatter about assembly polls in Assam,Kerala,Tamil Nadu and West Bengal,each no doubt important in its own way,another set of elections in Andhra Pradesh where polling is due on May 8 does not quite appear on the radar. But it could have some serious implications for the ruling Congress party and politics in a state that has been important to the UPA project since 2004.
The byelections for Kadapa,a parliamentary constituency,and Pulivendula,an assembly seat,are not just symbolic contests. Jaganmohan Reddy,the angry young breakaway rebel from the Congress and son of the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR),and his mother Vijayalakshmi are in the fray in Kadapa and Pulivendula,respectively. In over two years,this will be the third time the electorate in Pulivendula will cast their vote; and the second time in Kadapa. Directly impacted by the events set into motion by the chopper crash that killed YSR in September last year,his hometown in the now renamed YSR district,is turning into a straw poll on who is the true inheritor of his complex and mercurial legacy.
YSR is credited with largely reinventing the Congress in the state and by implication at the Centre. But handling his rebellious son after his demise proved tricky for the party. It did not want to hand over the reins of the state to a controversial youngster,nor did it succeed in convincing him to wait for the right moment and stay on course till then. This has led to this disastrous situation where the Congress is fighting him for YSRs legacy as it is the only thing that seems to keep the party afloat. With the state having got its third CM since 2009,the battle for control of the Congress spirit is now being fought in Kadapa and Pulivendula.
The Congress has set up reluctant candidates to take on YSRs family in their den. Over the years,Kadapa,or Cudappah,has been the place for a battle literally fought with feudal values of loyalty,revenge and blood and had shaped the politics of YSR,the Lion of Kadapa. The Congress,anxious about the prospect of a sound victory at the hustings for the breakaway YSR legatees,has put everything on the line. Reports of 12 ministers camping in the region for days on end,11 Jagans being brought as candidates in Kadapa,and eight Vijaylakshmis in Pulivendula only bring to the fore the anxiety about ceding ground.
In Pulivendula,YSRs brother,Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy,now a minister in the state cabinet,fights his sister-in-law. The candidate against Jagan,D.L. Ravindra Reddy,unkindly termed Deposit Loss for his initials by Jagan groupies,is the MLA from Mydukur,a part of the Kadapa parliamentary constituency.
The YSR Congress formed recently after Jagan and his mother broke away from the mother party,ostensibly for not being allowed to conduct the Odarpu Yatra,or thanking the Andhra citizens for grieving for his father reveals even in its name a need to appropriate YSRs political inheritance and the large Congress tent that he had created.
If the Congress was forced to change the earlier CM,a non-Reddy,and bring in a relatively young Reddy as chief minister,taking the battle to the heart of the partys influential support base of which the prosperous Reddys are a huge part,Jagan too is compelled to append the name Congress to his new party,the Yuvajana Sramikaa Rythu or YSR Congress. The YSR in Jagans party stands for the young,the labourer and the peasant. Despite being termed a novice by sure-footed Congress veterans,Jagan is nonetheless making the big party in the state play on his terms.
By fighting for the YSR legacy and allowing that fight to get limited to the family brother,wife and son the Congress has in effect allowed the arena to shrink and limit itself,rather than try and broaden what it stood for. As a result,it has found itself neither unable to take YSRs legacy forward,nor shake itself free of it. Ambiguity is sometimes a sharp political tool,but not in the face of the clarity that a fight in Kadapa brings with the widow and son of the dead YSR.
Jagan the candidate and Kiran Kumar Reddy,the present CM,are both decent cricketers. And cricket,we know,is a game
of glorious uncertainties. May 13,when the results will be announced and inheritors anointed,should force some clarity on the states political game plan.
seema.chishti@expressindia.com
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