The ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) in Andhra Pradesh has deployed a mix of seasoned and first-time women candidates to halt the onward march of the top guns of the BJP-TDP-Jana Sena alliance into the state Assembly. The state goes to the polls on May 13 to elect candidates to the 175-member Assembly.
Nara Lokesh, the general secretary of the TDP and former IT minister, is counted as the second-in-command of the party. He is contesting from Mangalagiri in Guntur district, from where he lost the election in 2019. He is pitted against a new contestant, M. Lavanya, who has replaced the sitting MLA, A Ramakrishna Reddy. Lokesh has been concentrating on the seat this time by not budging from the constituency and campaigning aggressively.
Lavanya is being backed by the top YSRCP leadership, and the constituency was also one of the venues of the bus yatra of YSRCP president and Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy. Lavanya belongs to the weavers' community, which constitutes a significant part of the electorate in Mangalagiri. The YSRCP is confident that the welfare measures extended to the weavers and women, in particular, will help propel the candidature of Lavanya, who hails from a political family.
Lokesh’s father-in-law, actor and MLA Nandamuri Balakrishna, is contesting from his traditional seat, Hindupur, in the Rayalaseema region. Since the founding of the TDP in 1982, the party has never lost Hindupur. What further helps Balakrishna is the fact that he has a fan base who connect and adore his movies made against the backdrop of Rayalaseema faction violence.
Standing opposite him is another first-time contestant from YSRCP, Koduri Deepika. Hailing from a business family, Deepika was announced as the in-charge of the constituency a few months back, much to the surprise of the local cadre. Ever since then, she has been campaigning aggressively in a bid to create history by defeating a star and also a TDP candidate for the first time in four decades. In the context of caste equations, Deepika has an advantage as she belongs to the Kuruva community, and her husband is from the Reddy caste. Put together, both communities poll a quarter of votes.
In the Pithapuram constituency, actor and founder of the Jana Sena Party (JSP), Pawan Kalyan, is trying his luck once again after unsuccessfully contesting from two seats in the last elections. He is in a face-off with YSRCP’s warhorse Vanga Geetha, who served as an MLA and MP and has been associated with multiple parties in her three-decade-long political career. Both contestants belong to the same community, Kapus, who are politically influential in the region. Both the parties are now gunning for non-Kapu votes to capture the seat.
