The Bharatiya Janat Party, which had reached a seat-sharing agreement with Telugu Desam Party after very tough bargaining has decided to forego one of its five lok Sabah seats in Seemandhra. The party has also surrendered one of the 15 Assembly seats it was given.
After returning Araku (ST) seat to the TDP, the BJP will now be contesting from four constituencies of Visakhapatanam, Narsapuram, Tirupati and Rajampet. The BJP sources said that the changes were made as party’s organisation was not strong in Araku, a tribal dominated constituency which was spread in four districts making mobilisation of cadre difficult.
As part of the fine tuning of the seat-sharing agreement, the TDP has agreed to give one legislative Council seat each in exchange of lok Sabha and Assembly seats.
At the same time the BJP and the TDP have also agreed to swap some assembly seats. Vijaywada Central Assembly seat is back with the TDP which has agreed to give any other Assembly seat in Krishna district in exchange. Similarly, the BJP has agreed to swap Anantapur Assembly seat for another seat in the same district.
TDP sources said that the swap was done in view of the local factor and situations. In both the constituencies, with significant Muslim voters, the TDP leadership was facing protests from the local leaders over leaving the seat for the BJP.
As far as Visakhapatanam lok Sabha seat was concerned, the TDP initially tried to take the seat back from an unwilling BJP as the YSR Congress Party had indicated that it may field either YS Vijayalakshmi or Sharmila there. TDP was afraid that the BJP’s probable candidate K Hari Babu will not be a match for the ladies and it was planning to field a strong candidate Ganta Srinivas Rao, who migrated from Congress. However when it became clear that the YSRCP will not field any member of YSR family there, TDP agreed to leave the seat for the BJP.