Uphill Task | Andhra Pradesh

For Yuvajana Sra­mika Rythu Congress (YSRC) president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, 46, it has been a long and arduous road to power. After launching the party in March 2011-when the Congress did not allow him to succeed his father Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy as chief minister-Jagan, as he is popularly known, has worked hard to emerge as the principal challenger to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh.

Peeved by the Congress's blunt refusal and hounded by financial misdemeanour cases (31 criminal cases, including seven under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act; 11 under the Prevention of Corruption Act are pending), Jagan quit the Grand Old Party. What worked for him was the Congress's ill-timed decision to reorganise Andhra Pradesh and ann­ounce Telangana as the 29th state of the country. It propelled the YSRC into becoming the alternative in Andhra, eclipsing the Congress in the state.

The new government faces several challenges. For one, the treasury is empty. Mobilising resources to continue some of the populist schemes launched between 2014 and 2019 by the TDP government, in the same form or by tweaking them, besides fulfilling the 'Navaratnalu' promises that Jagan himself has made during the poll campaign, is the primary challenge. Among the promises are 'YSR Rythu Bharosa'-a Rs 50,000 grant to small farmers, interest-free loans to women's self-help groups, Rs 2,000 as pension for senior citizens and widows, 2.5 million houses for the poor in five years, revamp of the Arogyasri health scheme and reintroducing the ban on liquor in a phased manner. These grandiose promises will be hard to keep for a cash-strapped state in the absence of guaranteed allocation of resources from the Centre.

The political camaraderie between the Narendra Modi government in Delhi and the YSRC will determine the flow of funds to the state as well as Jagan's big promise of securing Special Category Status (SCS) for Andhra Pradesh. The TDP, led by N. Chandrababu Naidu, failed to get it from the Modi government though it was an assurance made by PM Manmohan Singh when the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill was passed by Parliament in 2014. Jagan will have to muster all the tact and guile at his command to persuade Modi to review his government's stand on SCS.

The future of both parties in the state, the BJP and the YSRC, rests on finding a solution to this vexatious issue. It has even prompted Jagan to declare that the YSRC will support whichever party at the Centre was ready to grant SCS to the state.

Other big-ticket issues are the investments to build the greenfield capital Amaravati and the massive Polavaram project on the Godavari to generate electricity and irrigate farms. Having levelled a slew of accusations against Naidu on land acquisition, the YSRC is toying with the idea of scaling down, if not abandoning, Amaravati in favour of another site near Domakonda in Prakasam district.

The cost of the Polavaram project, originally approved for Rs 12,294 crore (at 2010-11 prices), has now ballooned to Rs 55,549 crore. Naidu had declared unilaterally that the state would meet the expenses after the Modi government rejected requests for funds. Congress MP K.V.P. Ramachandra Rao points out that the state may have to fork out Rs 28,467 crore towards cost escalation as the Centre had stated repeatedly that it will bear the costs at 2013-14 prices only. Rao has called for a white paper on the Polavaram project costs and expenses, while the YSRC chief is getting an official team to put out a white paper on the state's finances before getting into the details after his ministry assumes office on May 30.

Jagan's other challenge will be to identify those whom he can trust to help him run the state as a first-time chief minister. Ajeya Kallam, a retired IAS officer to whom he has turned for counsel on governance matters, is to be an official advisor. Others in the core team include S. Ramakrishna Reddy, his political secretary; and V. Vijaya Sai Reddy, the YSR family's chartered accountant-turned-party general secretary and Rajya Sabha member. Officials who enjoyed the late YSR's trust are also being roped in for the new Chief Minister's Office. As for Naidu, he may be haunted by the nagging question whether it was right for the TDP to contest an election without any allies-the first time it has done so in its 37-year history.