At the beginning of March 2020, the state of Andhra Pradesh was gearing up to have the elections for rural local bodies. The State Election Commission announced dates starting from March 21 for polls to MPTC, ZPTC, gram panchayats etc. By mid-March, opposition parties were beginning to demand that these elections be put on hold because of the onset of COVID. The ruling party folks took strong exception to this demand and wanted the polls to be held at any cost.

The State Election Commissioner, Mr. Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar, decided to postpone the polls keeping in mind the onset of COVIID. This was before there was even talk of a lockdown or Janata Curfew. The ruling party folks went verbally berserk. They bought in the caste angle of the SEC and attributed his decision to him being from the same caste as Chandrababu Naidu. They said COVID doesn’t exist and therefore this move by SEC is nothing but political in nature.

The ruling party, YSRCP, took the fight to lengthy extremes. A new GO was bought in, so that Mr. Ramesh Kumar could be removed from his post. The HC stepped in to reinstate Mr. Ramesh. While the SEC was getting ready to conduct elections in early 2021, the YSRCP government tried to put more spokes by approaching HC and SC despite receiving continuous setbacks.

This behaviour by Jagan’s party was very surprising given how it was clear even last year that the YSRCP party will win the local body polls. The ego clash with SEC, especially when the going was very good for YSRCP, was totally unwarranted. But even Jagan would not have expected the results that were out on March 14^th.

The YSRCP won all 11 Municipal Corporations and 73 out of the 75 municipalities! And the victory everywhere was not by some thin margins – the opposition was simply decimated. In the total 532 divisions in 11 corporations, YSRCP won 427 of them. Of the 1632 wards in municipalities that went to elections, the YSRCP won 1269 of them! The numbers are proof enough of the decimation the TDP had to go through. Given such massive support that YSRCP enjoys, it is really strange why Jagan Mohan Reddy went to such extreme lengths to either get rid of SEC or have elections held under a different SEC!

Predictably the opposition cried foul. They said money power won. They said that YSRCP won because they threatened the voters. No party has money power to the scale of literally sweeping everywhere they have contested from. So, what explains this unprecedented victory?

In my view, it is a combination of two factors. The first one being the obvious – good delivery on the promises made in the 2019 manifesto. Many schemes of the Jagan government are basically transferring money to accounts of beneficiaries (For example: 15000 per year into the mother’s account if she sends her child to school; 5000 per month to “Village volunteers”; increase in pension etc). The “village volunteers” was especially a big hit with the unemployed youth in the villages – the volunteers are responsible for ensuring government schemes reach all people in the village.

The second factor, I believe, is that the massive anger against Chandrababu hasn’t subsided. In fact, it looks like the anger against Chandrababu Naidu has increased manifold after the 2019 debacle. CBN and the TDP was largely not accessible during the immediate period after the lifting of the lockdown. They were not hitting the streets and meeting people to make the right noises. Chandrababu Naidu, believe it or not, even scolded the people attending his own rallies that they come to the rally but go vote for YSRCP! Despite repeated jokes about CBN brags about his past work, CBN didn’t learn any lesson from it. He continued to talk more about himself, ignored the next generation of leaders, refused to give exposure to many leaders of the party and most importantly – stays in Hyderabad, Telangana and not in Andhra Pradesh! CBN thinks he is awesome, and it is the voter that doesn’t understand him and therefore it is the voters’ fault! With such an egotistical attitude, it is really difficult to endear yourself to the people.

The TDP cadre is thus tired. The handful of MLAs seem to be in two minds as to whether to stay in the party or not. The cadre surely wants a leader who will enthuse them; fight with them; listen to them. Neither CBN nor his son Lokesh are doing this today. If they continue on this path, TDP may even plunge to deeper depths in the 2024 elections.

For those of you keen on BJP’s performance (it was in alliance with Jana Sena party), here are the combined numbers of the two parties – they won 8/532 divisions in 11 Municipal corporations and 25/1632 wards in town municipalities. Those of you trying to make comparisons to how BJP was a nobody in Karnataka, Odisha, West Bengal etc, need to understand one crucial point – the BJP in those states was trying to make space for itself in an already bi-polar arena. There was never an anger against the BJP in these states. The anger against BJP in AP is quite high (perhaps just a notch below the Congress party). It will take a lot of efforts and stupendous communication from the party for this anger to subside. Hence the abysmal numbers for the BJP alliance are not at all surprising.

Image Source: English Jagran