Andhra and Telengana: It's advantage BJP even when the party does not hold a promise there!!!

 

                While holding firm on the view that the outcome of the elections from a set of States will determine who will be our Prime Minister after May 16, 2014, I am also of the view that the choice is restricted between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi or any one whom his mother Sonia Gandhi  nominates. In other words, I will stick my neck out to say that there is no scope for a non-Congress-non-BJP government as it is. May 1996, when Deve Gowda emerged as Prime Minister is a story of the past and will remain an elusive idea at least in 2014.

                With this in mind, let me look at, closely, into the situation in the two Telugu speaking States—Andhra Pradesh and Telengana – from where as many as 42 MPs will be elected to the Lok Sabha. After the decision, guided primarily by partisan considerations of the Congress party, 17 Lok Sabha seats fall in Telengana and the 25 in what is now called Seemandra. And if we agree to keep the cynical designs (that led to the division) out of our minds for a moment, we may argue that the Congress is better off in the 17 seats. It’s ally in 2004 and 2009, the Telengana Rashtra Samiti, is no doubt guilty of having betrayed Sonia Gandhi when it refused to merge into the Congress even after its demand was executed.

And the TRS is likely to retain the couple of seats – Mahboobnagar and Medak -- that the outfit won in 2009. That the TRS does not claim any organizational presence in the rest of Telengana and the two seats it won in 2009 was also because of its alliance with the Congress. In this sense, the Congress organization as well as its ability to convert that into votes is beyond doubt insofar as the Telengana State is concerned. No doubt that the Congress had Y.S.Rajashekar Reddy on its side in the 2004 and 2009 elections; and that his legacy was taken over by his son, Jagan Reddy, after YSR’s death in September 2009. But then, the formation of Telengana, in the hurry in which it was executed, has helped the party wrest the organization and its mass support in 2014. The TDP is in an unenviable state and may find it hard to retain Khammam, the lone seat that the party had won from the Telengana region in 2009. And Jagan’s YSR Congress too may draw a blank from here.

This, however, is only part solace to the Congress. The party’s impressive score – 33 out of 42 along with the two TRS MPs and the lone MIM representative – had contributed significantly to the making of its total number of seats – 204 – after the 2009 elections. The BJP had drawn a blank from united-Andhra Pradesh and the TDP, its ally in the NDA had won only six Lok Sabha seats then. The Congress is in poor shape in 2014. And the party organization in Seemandra is almost gone, thanks to the making of Telengana. Sonia Gandhi will find it hard to field candidates with some strength in the 25 Constituencies across the truncated State. We are already hearing about sitting MPs, including cabinet ministers either wanting to retire from electoral politics or such of those like D.Purandeswari, one of NTR’s daughters whom the Congress had found to be on its side, joining the BJP!

And unlike in Telengana, the Congress mass base had shifted to Jagan Reddy’s YSR Congress in the past few years and what was still left with the party has been lost in the anger against the bifurcation of the State. The Telugu Desam Party, indeed, is there with its cadre intact making the contest for most of the 25 seats there between the Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Jagan’s YSR Congress. It is possible and most likely that these two parties share the 25 seats between themselves leaving the Congress and the BJP with chances that may lend them a couple of seats in the best case scenario. A case in point being the Vishakapatnam Lok Sabha seat where the Congress’s T.Subbirami Reddy and the BJP’s D.Purandeswari. But then, in the 24 other constituencies, it would be a contest between Jagan Reddy and Chandrababu Naidu insofar as Seemandra is concerned.

And between the two parties, it is for sure that the BJP stands a chance of their support in the event the party comes closer to government formation. While Naidu has been an old ally of the BJP, thanks to his anti-Congress stance, Jagan Reddy too has no strong convction against the BJP.  It is, after all, a fact that Jagan Reddy was involved, with the now infamous Reddy brothers of Bellary (the mine mafia), in financing Sushma Swaraj’s campaign against Sonia Gandhi some years ago.

In other words, it’s a win-win situation for the BJP, notwithstanding the fact that the party is nowhere in the reckoning from Seemandra, after the poll results are out. The BJP can bank upon either the TDP or the YSR Congress, whoever gets most of the 25 seats from Seemandra. In other words, while the Congress strength will be far lower that 33 this time from these two States (and thus pull down its Lok Sabha tally at least by 20 seats), the BJP can count on the support of at least 20 seats more this time.Well. In the remote possibility of the Congress getting close to 272, it can get Jagan to support if the party agrees to keep the CBI a caged parrot!

(This is the second part of a series I am doing on polls 2014. Plan to take up UP and Bihar next)