AP bypolls: Jagan kills Cong, Telangana with a single shot

By TS Sudhir

When he wasn’t in active politics, Jagan’s favourite pastime apparently was to watch children fantasy films, with his two kids - Harsha and Varsha - sitting on his lap. Today, if he watched the results of the byelections on Doordarshan inside Hyderabad’s Chanchalguda central prison, he must have felt a sense of deja vu. His party won 15 of the 18 assembly and one Lok Sabha seat, in what was clearly a very one-sided contest.

Fantasy or real?

He would just need to pinch himself to know it is real. Because the circumstances that he finds himself in are very real and stark. The cases slapped on him by the CBI and the register at the prison that knows him by a number - 6093.

Not that the results took anyone by surprise. YSR Congress, thanks to a combination of anti-incumbency against the Congress, the failure of the Telugu Desam to provide a credible alternative and Jagan’s own mass contact programme in distant villages and towns, was expected to romp home in a majority of the seats. That it did so, would give his party enough hope for the future. In terms of numbers, the party will now have 2 MPs and 17 MLAs, and more importantly, the momentum, despite its leader behind bars.

Belying the hopes of the Congress and Telugu Desam, Jagan’s alleged corruption did not become an issue with the voters. Despite his high-profile arrest in the midst of the election campaign, they ignored the CBI cases against him and voted in 15 of his candidates. Almost all of them triumphed with significantly impressive margins. The party is already projecting this as the ‘real’ victory. A poster that came up at the YSR Congress office in Hyderabad said : “What would the CBI court do now after the verdict in the People’s court?” Yet another boasted “a lion inside a cage is still a lion.’'

Another positive was that its candidate, Konda Surekha in Parkal in Telangana gave the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) a run for its money, losing finally by some 1500-odd votes. Jagan’s mother, Vijayamma said she was confident the party would soon make headway in Telangana too. The TRS would do well to treat this as a wake-up call. While it can continue to allege that BJP was in collusion with the YSRC, the fact remains that it can be complacent about its monopoly over Telangana sentiment at its own peril.

So are the election results dark clouds over the Congress horizon? Not quite. While the figures on paper look gloomy for the ruling party, Kiran Kumar Reddy can afford to look at the glass as half full. That it won two seats is no mean achievement particularly when the expectation was that it may have got out for a duck. His candidates also came second in six constituencies. In the present political context, the two seats provide Kiran with a much-needed figleaf. He can tell Delhi that the Emperor is not without clothes.

What are the takeaways from this election for the Congress? One, while the Reddy voters have moved away from the Congress, there seems to be a consolidation of the Kapu vote around the party. The credit for that is likely to go to Chiranjeevi, who belongs to the community. Both Narsapur and Ramachandrapuram, where the Congress won, have a significant Kapu population. This is likely to raise the actor-turned-politician’s stature within the party. Don’t rule out a central berth for Chiranjeevi very soon and though it may seem far-fetched now, he could even be brought in as CM, say six to eight months before the 2014 assembly elections.

The much-feared exodus from the Congress to YSRC may not happen immediately. Kiran Kumar Reddy is already trying to engage with the fence sitters, tempting them with the carrots of a cabinet berth. In any case, with the TDP in no position to face mid-term elections, it was a given that Chandrababu Naidu will bail out the government should such a crisis emerge.

The TDP has met with an accident in these bypolls, its bicycle completely smashed. Chandrababu Naidu’s excessive and obsessive focus on Jagan did not help. The TDP did not win a single seat and came second in only nine of the 18 constituencies. It will be a huge challenge for Naidu to get his party out of the ICU and enthuse the cadre after such a dismal performance.

The other big takeaway will be for Telangana. The fact that Jagan’s party, not seen as pro-Telangana, came second will give the Congress leadership the courage to bite the bullet on the contentious issue. Interestingly, Congress leaders from coastal Andhra wanted TRS to win but with a slender margin so that it can be interpreted as a weakening of the Telangana movement. They wanted YSRC to do well but not too well either because then it would lead to an exodus of Congress cadre in Telangana to Jagan’s venture.

Nationally, the NDA sees Jagan as someone who is likely to do well in 2014 and the BJP can be expected to treat him with kidgloves. Given the mess Karnataka is in, the saffron party needs another gateway to the south. Jagan has said he will not go with the BJP for fear of losing the minority vote but there is nothing to prevent him from becoming the Nitish Kumar of Andhra Pradesh. Just like Nitish works with Sushil Modi and spurns Narendra Modi, Jagan too can have his own Modi-fied approach to the BJP and the NDA.

NDA leaders believe as things stand today, YSR Congress could win around 20 Lok Sabha seats. With those kinds of assets, which pragmatic Indian politician would worry about Jagan’s ‘disproportionate assets’.

Watch this space.