Chittoor Constituency And Its Importance In the Andhra Pradesh Electoral Showdown

Chittoor, known for its ancient religious sites, is witnessing a fierce battle in the Parliamentary seat as well as in Assembly segments. The Chittoor Lok Sabha seat comprises seven assembly constituencies, including Chandragiri, Nagari, Chittoor, Gangadhara Nellore, Puthalappattu (SC), Palamaner, and Kuppam. About 78% of the Chittoor population resides in villages, and the rest lives in cities. The Chittoor Lok Sabha constituency is a Scheduled Caste (SC) reservation seat.

Chittoor was once a dominion of Congress, and the party has won the seat 11 consecutive times. After the formation of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 1982, Congress declined its stronghold, and the TDP has won the seat seven consecutive times.

In the 2019 general election, Chittoor Lok Sabha seat voters chose the YSR Congress Party in a strong wave favouring the party, winning 22 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state. In his maiden victory, YSR Congress Party candidate N Reddeppa has won the seat with a large margin of 1,37,271 votes, securing 6,86,792 votes. Concurrently, YSRCP has also won six of the seven assembly seats, while TDP has retained the Kuppam seat through former Chief Minister and TDP National President, Nara Chandra Babu Naidu.

Chittoor Lok Sabha constituency caught much attention through the Kuppam Assembly seat. N Chandra Babu Naidu, the TDP supremo, has won the seat for seven consecutive terms and is seeking the next term. The TDP supremo won the seat for the first time in 1989 from Chandragiri in Congress. Later, he jumped the ship and joined the TDP in 1982, shifting focus to the Kuppam assembly seat and securing his maiden victory in 1989. Naidu has been MLA of Kuppam for 35 years, serving Chief Minister three times in his political journey. However, the 2024 elections present a critical challenge for him and the party, both at the state level and in his very own constituency.

Chittoor carries surprise in the political camps in the 2024 elections because of the voting share of political parties in earlier elections. Apart from the YSRCP and TDP, Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) hold a chunk of the vote share in the poll results. In the 2009 general election, Congress came in second, securing 32.11% of the vote share, but has declined to 1.26% and 1.87% in the following 2014 and 2019 elections, respectively. Meanwhile, BSP has also kept 1.52% and 1.2% of the vote share in the 2019 and 2014 elections, respectively. Even a minimal vote share by the BJP would help the tripartite alliance increase its vote share in this election.

The YSRCP has fielded N Redeppa as the candidate, the incumbent MP, for the second consecutive win. The election campaign focusing on welfare schemes of the state government, a victory margin of more than 1.25 lakh votes in the 2019 election, and the stronghold of assembly segments will give credence to the YSRCP camps. The TDP-led NDA alliance has fielded Dagummalla Prasad Rao, a retired Indian Railway Service (IRS) officer, as the candidate. Rao criticises the complete standstill of industrial development in the YSRCP regime and points out the guarantees for the transformation of Chittoor into an industrial hub. Besides, he highlighted the creation of 20 lakh jobs in the state within the next five years to address unemployment from a long-term perspective. If the TDP can collect the custom vote bank, the alliance vote share, and the splitting of votes among the parties, such as Congress and BSP, as per the reports, it will lead to a win for the TDP, even with a small margin.

(This story is part of a Timeline. internship project.)