YSR Congress Party president YS Jaganmohan Reddy has surprised his political rivals and observers alike by the meticulous choice of his candidates for the lok Sabha and Assembly seats in Seemandhra region.
The young leader has come up with a list of fair representation to all the sections of society and has evidently tried to satisfy every section in the caste-conscious State.
In some areas he, in fact, outdid most of the senior politicians and old foxes like Nara Chandrababu Naidu of Telugu Desam Party. YSRCP can boast of more lok Sabha ticket for women than any other party. The 24 lok Sabha candidates of the party include five women, most notable being Jagan’s mother Vijayalakshmi from prestigious seat of Visakhapatanam. The other women in the fray include K Geeta (Araku-SC), Reddi Shanti (Srikakulam) Samanya Kiran (Chittoor) and Butta Renuka (Kurnool).
Similarly 170 Assembly candidates include 13 women.As far as the caste make-up of the Assembly candidates list is concerned a lion’s share of 52 tickets have gone to the Reddy community, to which Jagan belongs.Kapus, numerically strong in coastal Andhra were given 30 tickets. Kammas, who are another strong upper caste, traditional supporters of Telugu Desam, have got 13 seats. Muslims, another strong supporter of YSR family in Rayalseema were given four tickets. Kshatriyas, Velamas, Padmashalis, Yadavas, Gowdas and all others have found place in the list but there is no one from the Brahmin community which has less than 2% votes in the State. In total there are 38 Backward Classes, 27 Scheduled Castes, Seven Scheduled Tribes and four Muslim candidates in the list.
In the lok Sabha list too the Reddys dominate with nine candidates, Kapus with five and two have been given to Kammas. But no Muslim found a place in this list.
Another special feature of Jagan’s list was that a handful of families have cornered a number of tickets. They include six members of YS family — Jagan from Pulivendula Assembly constituency, mother Vijayalakshmi from Vizag, uncle Ravindranath Reddy from Kamalapuram, cousin from Kadapa lok Sabha constituency and two other relatives SV Subba Reddy and Balineni Srinivas Reddy.
Mekapati Rajmohan Reddy is candidate from Nellore lok Sabha constituency and two families Chandrasekhar Reddy and Gautam Reddy were contesting from Assembly constituencies. Another five families have been given two or more tickets.
Former Revenue Minister Dharmana Prasad Rao, who quit the Congress to join YSRCP and his brother were also given the ticket.Jagan also gave tickets to 40 MlAs who quit Congress and TDP to join his party.Meanwhile, the BJP was still in two minds on whom to pit against Vijayalakshmi in Visakhapatanam. While earlier party was considering the name of Seemandhra BJP president K Hari Babu, now the name of former Minister D Purandeswari was being considered.