Andhra Pradesh | Jagan Sharpens His Knife

At a time when the ruling Telugu Desam Party is organising programmes across the state to highlight its development record and trajectory during the past four-and-a-half years, Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress (YSRC) president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy has lined up a campaign, Ninnu Nammam Babu (we don’t trust you, Babu), to highlight the promises chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has failed to keep, including winning special category status for the state, loan waivers, a job for every household and free housing for the poor.

Barely weeks after his 14-month-long walkathon across Andhra Pradesh concluded on January 9, Jagan began the second phase of his campaign, in consultation with election strategist Prashant Kishor. The Ninnu Nammam Babu campaign has been implemented quite meticulously, and just as Naidu uses technology to impress voters, YSRC coordinators are visiting 20 villages each, covering all the 175 assembly constituencies, in branded vehicles; six hoardings are put up at village meetings, each highlighting one of the failures’ of the Naidu government.

Jagan is also preparing for a bus yatra to cover the 50 assembly constituencies he could not visit during his padayatra. He is moving his home and party headquarters from Hyderabad to Tadepalli for closer coordination of the campaign. Jagan is leaving little to chance keeping in mind the slender two percentage points vote share margin by which his party lost in 2014. On January 31, he started yet another campaign, Jagan Anna Pilupu (brother Jagan’s call), to attract neutral influencers’ and create a network of such people in villages. During his first meeting in Hyderabad with people who can influence potential voters, Jagan explained his vision for Andhra Pradesh, following which those attending it were asked to share their perspective on the issues facing specific regions and suggest ways to address them. YSRC is planning to hold similar meetings in all the 13 districts of the state. The campaign, also conceptualised by Kishor, aims to create a network of village-level influencers’, who can function as the link between Jagan and the people at the grassroots level. These people were identified between September and December last year. The strategy is for Jagan to establish a direct and long-lasting personal connect with these people and gather inputs from them on a regular basis. By meeting and understanding their viewpoints, the YSRC aims to start a dialogue to reimagine and co-create the Andhra Pradesh of tomorrow, says the party’s Rajya Sabha member, V. Vijaysai Reddy.