Will Vishakhapatnam Elect TDP After Twenty Five Years?
Vishakhapatnam Lok Sabha Constituency, the second largest city on the eastern coast of India, will witness a fierce battle in the 2024 General elections. Vishakhapatnam, or Vizag, is more important in the election fray because of their change in selecting political parties in the prior general elections. Interestingly, this most populated city has elected four political parties in the previous five general elections. Since the 1999 election, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), and YSR Congress Party have won the seat one term, and Congress twice, in 2004 and 2009.
In the 2019 elections, the YSR Congress party’s MVV Satyanarayana won the seat by a margin of 4,414 votes. YSRCP has also won three assembly seats, while TDP has won four, which are Vishakhapatnam North, South, East, and West. YSRCP has won Srungavarapukota, Bhimli, and Gajuwaka seats with less than 50% of the vote share. The BJP won the seat in 2014 by securing 45.72% of the vote,, which was one of the two seats won by the BJP from Andhra Pradesh. The Vishakhapatnam seat has been traditionally the stronghold of the Congress party until the setback in 2009. Congress won the seat for the last time in 2009 by fielding the candidate Duggubati Purandeswari, securing 29.75% of the vote share. The TDP won the seat for the last time in 1999. After twenty-five years, the TDP aims to win the seat along with the alliance of the BJP and the Jana Sena Party (JSP). Congress’s candidate, Pulusu Sathyanarayana Reddy, is also in the fray.
According to the statistics, the tripartite alliance, which includes TDP, BJP, and JSP has chances of winning the seat in the 2024 elections. In 2019, JSP and BJP secured 23.3% and 2.73% of vote shares, respectively. The total vote share of this tripartite alliance will be almost 60%, which is 25% more than the vote share that the YSRCP candidate has secured in the same election. Besides, reports indicate that the stronghold of the TDP in four assembly segments may also help the party ensure victory in this historic seat. The TDP has fielded a 29-year-old young candidate, Bharath Muthukumilli, who is the son-in-law of actor and Hindupur MLA, N Balakrishna, for the seat. Sribharat, the chairperson of Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (GITAM) institutions, is the son of MVVS Murthi, who won the seat on the TDP ticket in 1999, which was the last win of the TDP in a constituency. This will be Sribharat”s second attempt to follow in his father’s footsteps. The TDP has come up with a Vishakhapatnam-specific manifesto, which specifies seven development points for the Vizag. TDP also highlights “the capital issue”, announced by Jagan Mohan Reddy in 2019, with Vishakhapatnam as the executive capital of the state with the three-capital plan. TDP promotes that it has been a decade since the three-capital plan, and there is no clarity as to whether the city will get the status of capital or not.
The YSR Congress party has fielded Dr Botcha Jhansi Laxmi, who is married to state Education Minister Botsa Satyanarayana, to retain the seat. She has also served as Lok Sabha MP twice in the past, in Bobbili and Vizianagaram. In the absence of national issues, Jhansi Laxmi and YSRC highlight the election campaign revolving around the welfare schemes of the state government, such as Jaganna Amma Vodi, which encourages parents to send their children to school by depositing 13,000 rupees into the bank account of the mother. As a poll narrative is very much localised, YSRCP emphasises its campaigns around its Vision Visakha, a Rs 1.5 lakh crore project for the development of the port city that CM Jagan Mohan Reddy announced in March.
(This story is part of a Timeline. internship project.)
