After a lot of discussions and news leaks, the BJP-TDP-Jana Sena alliance in Andhra Pradesh was finally formally announced on March 9^th, 2024. This was perhaps one of the coldest announcements of an alliance, in recent times! Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan were in Delhi for 3 days, had just two meetings with J.P. Nadda and Amit Shah and then all three parties released press statements praising each other. A huge public meeting is scheduled for March 17^th.

Both the Jana Sena Party (JSP) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) campaigned hard against Modi in the 2019 elections. In fact, the JSP is one of the first parties to have falsely highlighted The Wire’s filthy report on the North-South divide back in 2017. The abuses that the TDP leadership and cadre heaped on Modi are still too fresh in the memory of many people. Chandrababu Naidu even used the Assembly sessions to heap his abuses on Modi.

After the 2019 debacle in AP for both the TDP and JSP, JSP was the first party to come back to the NDA fold. Pawan Kalyan realised his folly of going alone in the 2019 elections, with no agenda. He himself lost the election from 2 seats. As time progressed, Pawan Kalyan became more aggressive in his speeches against the Jagan Mohan Reddy government. Pawan Kalyan was the first one to propose that the only way to beat Jagan Mohan Reddy in 2024 is to not allow a split in the opposition vote. He recently explained to his cadre how difficult it was for him to convince the BJP to take TDP back into the NDA fold.

Chandrababu Naidu faced his worst ever defeat in 2019. Jagan Mohan Reddy announced a sudden plan to build three capitals instead of one. Chandrababu’s media suddenly changed track and started publishing articles that the capital Amaravati is in fact ready and nothing else needs to be built. Before the 2019 elections, this same media was constantly attacking Modi that he gave nothing to the capital. I think this was the turning point for the TDP also to make amends for their mistakes from 2019. Chandrababu Naidu started making attempts to warm up to the BJP again. The desperate attempts were also a result of the cadre’s unrest that has been out of power (both at the state and the centre). It was finally Chandrababu’s arrest by Jagan Mohan Reddy that started turning the tide in favour of the TDP.

The 52-day arrest created sympathy towards Chandrababu Naidu, perhaps even more than the assassination attempt on him by the Naxals created back in 2003. It was during this period that Pawan Kalyan announced that he will ally with TDP for the 2024 elections and will try to convince the BJP too. He finally succeeded!

Out of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in AP, the BJP will contest in 6, the JSP in 2 and the TDP in 17. The BJP has compromised on the MLA seats (will contest only 10 out of the 175). Pawan Kalyan had a very tough time convincing his cadre that the 24 seats he got as part of the alliance (down to 21 now) are justified for the strength he has. Chandrababu Naidu is also continuously stressing in his public meetings how the vote transfer between JSP and TDP must happen at the booth level, otherwise all efforts will be futile. There is still some doubt left in the minds of both Chandrababu and Pawan Kalyan that the cadre may not resort to vote transfer.

There is a definite anger against the Jagan Mohan Reddy government, especially amongst the youth. This is also evident from the fact that Jagan lost the MLC elections for the graduate constituency. But there is also significant support for Jagan from the women beneficiaries of his welfare programs. Recently, Jagan released a full page ad giving details of what his government has done exclusively for Chandrababu’s constituency, Kuppam. The veracity of the statistic aside, there is a very interesting aspect of that ad. Jagan tells us that his government gave 1400 crores through DBT, and 489 crores through non-DBT. 489 crores in non-DBT just for one constituency. Can you imagine the scale of money distributed throughout the state, in these 5 years in the non-DBT mode? Can you predict what impact it will have on the elections in 2024? The story of the 2024 elections will perhaps lie in this non-DBT transfer.

English and Hindi TV channels have been publishing surveys recently. Two of the surveys indicate that despite all this consolidation, the YSRCP will romp home with 22 out of the 25 seats. Two surveys though indicated that the TDP+ will win about 10 out of the 25 seats. With the alliance now formalised, time will tell how these numbers will change.

Image source: Vaartha