By picking Vijayawada, Naidu just got a capital advantage in Andhra

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu today announced that the area surrounding Vijayawada will be the capital of newly bifurcated Andhra Pradesh in a move that may greatly benefit his political career. [caption id=“attachment_1674913” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu. IBNLive[/caption] The Chief Minister has insisted that the decision was made on the basis of availability of proper infrastructure, logistics, land and other potential aspects for building a whole new capital. However, the politics of caste and region have also no doubt played an important role in the new government’s choice of a future capital. Every prominent party in the state presently represents one major caste and even after division, the political parties remain true to them. The Congress was typically known as a bastion of the Reddy domain but has seen its base eaten into by the YSR Congress and Jaganmohan Reddy. The TDP has always been seen as enjoying the support of the Kamma community while the vote of the other major community, Kapus, distribute their votes among all parties and this time they supported TDP. A majority of the residents in Vijayawada are from the Kamma community and coastal Andhra (Vijayawada is in Coastal Andhra) has a healthy mix of Kammas, Kapus and other backward castes. Both these castes are expectedly supporting the decision to shift the capital near Vijaywada, after the shared capital of Hyderabad is handed over to Telangana. On the other hand, Reddys are the dominant caste in Rayalaseema region, and Jagan Reddy could see his erosion in his support base for his failure to bring the state’s next capital to this part of Andhra Pradesh. In the state elections held earlier this year, Jagan won seats only in Reddy-dominated Rayalaseema and with his inability to have a say in formation of the new capital, could hit him politically. The choice of the new capital already sparked resentment in Rayalaseema with a bandh being observed in Kurnool to protest the choice of of Vijayawada as the state’s new capital, a  Times of India report.