Andhra Pradesh: Pawan Kalyan banks on Godavari districts

Hailing from the powerful Kapu community of the region, Pawan Kalyan is confident of staging a turnaround this time

Visakhapatnam: Film actor and Jana Sena Party president Pawan Kalyan is focusing on the East and West Godavari districts in a bid to get a stranglehold on Andhra Pradesh politics.

He already toured the place once to overwhelming response from the public to the Varahi yatra and has assured them of visiting the place once more to seek their support in the 2024 general elections. Hailing from the powerful Kapu community of the region, he is confident of staging a turnaround this time.

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Political observers argue that the film actor is playing his cards close to the chest after the bitter experience in the 2019 elections in which JSP contested in 137 of the 175 seats in the states but ended up with a solitary win. The joy was also short lived as the MLA chose to support the YSR Congress Party government openly.

Both the Godavari districts account for as many as 34 Assembly constituencies and Pawan Kalyan has vowed that he would not allow even a single seat for the ruling party.

His confidence stems from the fact that he would be able to impress upon the BJP national leaders on the need to take along the main opposition Telugu Desam Party to ensure that the anti-incumbency vote in Andhra Pradesh is not split. The BJP which already is in alliance with the JSP, knows only well that it has not yet found its moorings in the state despite its presence over decades and whenever it won, it won purely with TDP’s support.

However, the TDP national president N Chandrababu Naidu is made to pay the price for joining hands with the Congress and other oppositional parties at the national level in the 2019 polls to launch a tirade against the Modi government after sailing with the latter for nearly four years. The BJP has not taken kindly to it, particularly after the attack on its national president Amit Shah at Tirupati, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was greeted in Andhra Pradesh with black baloons during electioneering.

Unless Pawan Kalyan stiches up the much-needed alliance of the three opposition parties, he would not go anywhere near the coveted Chief Minister’s post. The JSP president, at present, is counting the chickens before they are hatched, as he hopes to sit on the gaddi the same way Kumaraswamy did in Karnataka with a handful of seats in the past.