B K Parthasarathi, TDP's Confidence In Hindupur (image@BKP_official)

BK Parthasarathi has been with the Telugu Desam Party since its inception. He started his political career by becoming the Zilla Parishad chairman of the Anantapur district in 1996. During the 1999 Lok Sabha election, he contested from Hindupur and win the seat by defeating Indian National Congress’ (INC) S. Gangadhar with a majority of 134,636 votes.

In the 2004 general election, he lost the seat to G Nizamuddin of Congress over a margin of mere 1,840 votes. Parthasarathi contested in the 2009 assembly election from the Penukonda assembly seat of Andhra Pradesh and won the seat by defeating Congress’ K T Sreedhar, over the margin of 14,385 votes. He retained the seat in 2014 assembly election by defeating Malagundla Sankaranarayana of YSRCP (Yuvajana Shramika RythuCongress Party), but lost the seat in 2019 assembly election. Parthasarathi was appointed as TDP’s president in 2009.

Having made the TDP district president, Parthasarathi had an advantage of influencing the people of all seven assembly constituencies. The reported anti-incumbency sentiment said to have worked for Parthasarathi. Talking to media, the TDP leader said that the weak performance of sitting MP of YSRCP, Gorantla Madhav, has worked in his favour. He claimed that the election was a cake walk for him. The BJP-TDP-Jana Sena alliance has also played in favour of Parthsarathi.

Apart from Parthasarathi, J Shanta of YSRCP, and B A Samad Shaheen of Indian National Congress were also in the fray to clinch the Hindupur Lok Sabha seat. While Shaheen was a new face, Shanta was an experienced politician. She was a BJP member and was elected to the Parliament from Bellary during the 2009 Lok Sabha election on BJP ticket. There were total of thirteen candidates in Hindupur including the independent candidates.