A strange situation is prevailing in Andhra Pradesh politics in the ongoing general elections.
There has been huge competition for the party tickets to contest assembly elections in all the major parties, particularly the two major contenders – Telugu Desam Party and YSR Congress party, but the leaders are evincing little interest in contesting the Lok Sabha elections.
In the TDP, party president and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu is literally struggling to convince senior leaders to contest the Lok Sabha seats. None of them is evincing interest in contesting the Lok Sabha polls.
For example, Naidu requested assembly speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao to contest Narsaraopet LS seat, but he is keen contesting only assembly elections – either from Sattenapalli or Narsaraopet. Even sitting MP Rayapati is not very much interested, but he has no other option.
For Kadapa Lok Sabha seat, the TDP chief virtually forced minister C Adinarayana Reddy to contest.
For Rajahmundry, sitting MP Magunta Muralimohan is not interested in contesting, forcing Naidu to look for an alternative candidate. For Visakhapatnam LS seat, too, minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao bluntly refused to contest.
For Hindupur, also, sitting MP Nimmala Kishtappa wanted to contest the assembly polls, but Naidu had to struggle a lot to convince him to contest again.
From Ongole, the TDP chief brought tremendous pressure on minister Siddha Raghava Rao to contest as an MP, as Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy defected to the YSR Congress party.
Same is the situation in YSR Congress party in many constituencies. Leaders are evincing interest in contesting the assembly seats, rather than Lok Sabha.
Seniors like Botsa Satyanarayana, Killi Kruparani, Dharmana Prasada Rao and K Parthasarathy are said to have expressed reluctance to contest the Lok Sabha polls.
As a result, YSRC president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy is forced to depend on defectors from the TDP and Congress to contest the Lok Sabha elections.
