Telugu Desam Party (TDP) headed by former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and its alliance partner Jana Sena Party (JSP) headed by Pawan Kalyan announced a combined list of 99 candidates on Saturday for the upcoming Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh.
Speaking to reporters at his residence in Undavalli in Amaravati, Naidu said, “According to the seat sharing agreement between the two parties, JSP would be contesting for 24 seats in the 175-member state assembly. Besides, it would also contest from three Lok Sabha constituencies.”
The initial list of candidates consisted of 94 candidates by the TDP and only five names by the JSP.
“We shall announce the names for the remaining 19 seats shortly,” Kalyan said.
Naidu also said that both parties were still awaiting a response from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regarding joining the alliance.
“If the BJP comes forward, we shall take a call on allotment of the seats to that party accordingly,” he added.
The first list of 94 candidates belonging to the TDP comprises 17 candidates from Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 18 from Scheduled Castes, four from Scheduled Tribes, 19 from Kapu, one from Velama, four from Kshatriya, 12 from Kamma, 15 from Reddy, two from Vysya, one from minorities and one Balija community.
According to the TDP leader, 23 of the 94 candidates are newcomers and 13 are women. The list includes 28 candidates with post-graduate degrees, 50 candidates with graduate degrees, 3 doctors, and two Ph.D.s. and one IAS officer.
While Naidu will contest the elections from Kuppam constituency in Chittoor district, his son and TDP general secretary, Nara Lokesh, will contest the elections from Mangalagiri constituency in Guntur district. Meanwhile, Nandamuri Balakrishna, his brother-in-law, will be competing in the Hindupur constituency.
Naidu said that the selection of candidates was done after considering the opinions of over 13.3 million people through an interactive voice response system.
“By embracing crowdsourcing, the TDP-JSP alliance aims to decentralise power, placing the aspirations and voices of the people of Andhra Pradesh at the forefront of their political agenda, he added.
The JSP chief said, his party had agreed to contest only in 24 seats keeping in view the broader interests of the state, rather than the interests of the party or individuals.
He said that had JSP won at least 10 seats in the 2019 Assembly elections, he would have demanded more seats from the TDP. However, the party won only one seat.
“There is no point in asking for more seats as part of an alliance and experimenting with them. We thought we would ask for those seats where we have fair chances of winning,” Kalyan said.
Meanwhile, the general secretary of ruling YSR Congress party and advisor to the Andhra Pradesh government Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy said, the list of 99 candidates released by the TDP-JSP indicated that Kalyan had no independent stature in the Andhra Pradesh politics and that he was only playing a second fiddle to Naidu.
“The Jana Sena has proved to be an affiliated party of the TDP. Instead of agreeing for just 24 seats, it would have been better if Pawan Kalyan merged his party with the TDP,” Reddy said and wondered whether Naidu himself would field the TDP candidates in the seats allotted to Jana Sena.
He further said, even if both TDP and JSP indulged in any kind of theatrics, the people were with the YSRCP, as 87% of them were enjoying the benefits of welfare schemes implemented by chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy.