It's a question of majority only in Kuppam, feels TDP

Tirupati: In the upcoming crucial elections, TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu will be testing his luck for the eighth consecutive time in his Kuppam fort amid questions on his possible majority this time. Naidu has been winning the seat since 1989 after he became a first time MLA from Chandragiri in 1978 on Congress ticket.

After losing the same seat in 1983, he turned his focus successfully on Kuppam and made a strong impact there.

But, unlike before, the ruling YSRCP has been playing mind games to weaken the morale of the TDP cadres hoping that Naidu would lose this time. The childhood arch rival and senior minister in the present government Peddireddi Ramachandra Reddy has been putting in all efforts in that direction.

The YSRCP succeeded in winning the municipal elections in Kuppam but under the fast-changing political equations, the question is can YSRCP defeat Naidu. Not such an easy task, people feel. TDP leaders and cadre feel that YSRCP will once again try to bring in outsiders in large numbers to cast bogus votes. But this time all such tricks will not work.

They have been maintaining that the people also realised the value of Naidu and the crooked politics of YSRCP and it would be a cake walk for Naidu, they say.

Kuppam is located at the tri-lingual junction connecting AP, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka while the constituency was established in 1955. Out of 14 elections held so far to elect MLAs, TDP has been winning the seat consecutively since the inception of the party in 1983. Its candidate N Rangaswami Naidu won the election in 1983 and 1985 after which Naidu entered the constituency and never looked back. Thus, he laid a lasting impression on the constituency with various development initiatives and made it his strong fort.

Needless to say that before 1983, Congress and Independents won the elections there twice each while CPI emerged victorious once in 1962.

After the special summary revision of electoral rolls, the constituency has 2,23,311 voters out of which 1,11,855 are women. ‘Vannekula Kstatriya’ is a dominant community to which the YSRCP constituency in-charge and MLC K R J Bharath belongs to. While his father and a former civil servant K Chandramouli was defeated by Naidu in 2014 and 2019, after his death, Bharath became active and became in-charge of the party.

Significantly, Naidu secured 47,121 votes majority in 2014 which was reduced to 30,722 in 2019. Citing this and the local bodies’ elections, the ruling party has been claiming that they are going to win the seat. However, TDP leaders are saying that Naidu’s victory will be beyond any doubt and they are looking for the majority only excepting that this time it will cross 50,000 mark.