Resurgence of BJP in Andhra Pradesh comes as a surprise

The Assembly election results in Andhra Pradesh have taken everyone by surprise. None expected that Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) would slip from a dominating 151 seats to just 11.

But, the bigger surprise was the resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the State. It won three of the six Lok Sabha seats allotted to it as per the seat-sharing agreements with its partners—Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Jana Sena Party (JSP). Coming to the Assembly elections, the BJP won eight of the 10 seats it contested from.

The BJP’s vote share has also gone up from 0.8% in 2019 to over 3.5% this election. In 2014, when the BJP was in alliance with the same political parties, its vote share shot up to over 4%.

Speaking to The Hindu, BJP vice-president and MLA-elect from Visakhapatnam (North) Vishnu Kumar Raju attributed the success to the well-coordinated effort by the cadres and leaders of the alliance partners.

The exit polls predicted that Mr. Vishnu Kuma Raju’s win would be the toughest among all the seven Assembly segments under the Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha constituency and that K.K. Raju of the YSRCP had an edge. But, Mr. Vishnu proved all predictions wrong by winning the polls with a handsome majority of 47,500 votes. Among the BJP winners of the eight Assembly seats, Mr. Vishnu Kyuma Raju won with the biggest margin.

Mr. Vishnu Kumar Raju defeated Ch. Venkata Rao of the YSRCP in the same constituency in 2014. However, he lost in 2019 elections and was pushed to the fourth position. The BJP had fought the elections alone as the alliance was broken.

Railway zone is a priority, says MLA-elect

Talking about his priorities, he said the construction of the announced South Coast Railway Zone (SCoR) with Visakhapatnam as its headquarters on a war footing would be his primary objective.

“The project has been pending due to the delay in the allotment of land by the State government. We will speed up things now,” he said and reiterated that Visakhapatnam Steel Plant would not be privatised.

“My prime focus will be curbing ganja menace and bringing the law and order back on track. Visakhapatnam has always been a peaceful city. The city, however, has lost its character in the last five years due to bad governance and crimes. This needs to be fixed first,” he said.

“We will ensure justice to the victims of land grabbing and scrap the Land Titling Act,” he said.

Referring to the APTDC resort built atop Rushikonda Hill, which was tipped to be Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s camp office, he said, “We will make good use of the facility. We have some plans such as converting it into an APTDC resort or making it a convention centre.”