ANALYSIS There has always been a pattern in the elections in Andhra Pradesh ever since the advent of the Telugu Desam Party in 1983. An iconic leader or an emotive issue has always driven the voting pattern in the state.
Facing the assembly elections this time, the TRS has a unique combination of both. It has the leader - K Chandrasekhar Rao, who is being projected as its chief ministerial candidate - as well as the emotional issue of Telangana.
The Congress, on the other hand, doesn’t have one leader who can be projected as its chief minister candidate, though the party is trying to claim credit for the creation of Telangana.
This time around, only the 10 districts of Telangana are going to polls, unlike in the earlier general elections where they would go to polls with the districts of north coastal Andhra. As many as 265 candidates are testing their political fortunes in the 17 Lok Sabha seats from the region, while 1669 contestants are vying with one another for the 119 Assembly seats.
Historically, the voters in this region have stood by personalities and fallen back on emotion in the absence of a powerful leader. When the legendary NT Rama Rao launched the Telugu Desam amid euphoria and fanfare in 1983, it was his larger than life personality that cast its influence on the electorate across Andhra Pradesh.
The three-decade-long Congress rule in the state had turned out to be vexatious and NTR chose the right slogan of Telugu pride to mesmerize voters across the state. While kindling an emotion among people who were yearning for a change, NTR also ignited tempers among the people against the ‘misrule of the Congress’.
While the whole nation rallied behind Rajiv Gandhi following the assassination of his mother Indira Gandhi on the eve of 1984 Lok Sabha elections, Andhra Pradesh gave a completely contrasting verdict by choosing 32 Telugu Desam MPs, making it the single largest Opposition party in Lok Sabha. The Congress could not reap the sympathy vote here because the people had been angered by its obnoxious act of ousting NTR and enthroning his no.2 Nadendla Bhaskara Rao in August 1984.
The grand old party under its mighty leader Indira Gandhi had to lick its wounds and reinstate NTR just after a month. This naturally manifested in the form of a massive support to the TDP at the hustings. Marri Channa Reddy paid back NTR in the same coin in 1989 when he used anti-incumbency, for the TDP was in power for almost seven years. Channa Reddy worked his way up as the president of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) and meticulously trounced the TDP, in spite of NTR's charismatic personality.
He impaled a few policies of the NTR’s Government as anti-people and curried favour of the people’s disgust against the incumbent regime. The Congress fell prey to its own misadministration by changing chief ministers thrice in the assembly elections of 1989-’94. This naturally became the trump card for the iconic leader NTR who naturally catapulted his party to power.
Distraught with the Congress, the people of the state gave such a resounding mandate to the TDP and its allies that the grand old party had to be content with a meager 26 out of 294 assembly seats. The TDP piggybacked on the emotion triggered by the Kargil War and the sympathy evoked by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the 1999 Assembly elections, thanks to its pre-election pact with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
YS Rajasekhara Reddy groomed himself into a cynosure in the Congress by undertaking a historic padayatra and geared up the Congress and its allies election-ready and inflicted a humiliating defeat on the TDP by restricting its number of MLAs not to touch the 50-mark in 2004 elections.
He repeated the feat by showcasing his populist programmes as election issues at the 2009 hustings. Ever since, the TRS has been cashing on the Telangana sentiment in every byelection in the State and proved the point that Telangana is an emotional issue, electorally too.
YS Jaganmohan Reddy invoked the sentiment of injustice meted out to his family and also pitched his leadership as the biggest bet in the byelections held in June 2012 posting a big time victory by winning 15 out of 18 Assembly seats that went to polls.
Against this background, will KCR come up trumps?
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