Heavy competition in BJP for LS tickets

Vijayawada: There is a heavy competition for tickets in Andhra Pradesh BJP as the party has entered into an alliance with TDP and BJP. The party will be contesting in six Lok Sabha and 10 Assembly seats as part of the understanding arrived at the tripartite discussions.

Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and BJP national vice-president Baijayant Jay Panda held talks with the TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan at Tadepalli for two days and left for Delhi on Monday.

They submitted the list of aspirants to the national BJP leaders. As the BJP claims to form next government at the Centre, BJP leaders in the state are strongly lobbying to contest the polls.

BJP state president Daggubati Purandeswari, former Union minister Sujana Chowdary, former AP chief Somu Veerraju, former MLC and BJP state vice-president P V N Madhav, former MP CM Ramesh, BJP AP general secretary S Vishnuvardhan Reddy, Rajya Sabha member G V L Narasimha Rao, former united AP CM N Kiran Kumar Reddy, Kothapalli Geetha, Y Satya Kumar and other senior leaders are in the race for tickets.

Since the three-party alliance is contesting the polls under the banner of NDA, the understanding among the cadre and leaders in the respective constituencies is also very important during the campaign to win the elections.

The BJP joined the alliance just ahead of election schedule, with little time to establish relations between three party activists and prepare poll strategy to win maximum number of votes.

While the ruling YSRCP is struggling to find the candidates for Lok Sabha seats, there is no dearth of aspirants in TDP-JSP-BJP alliance.

In YSRCP, many leaders are inclined to contest for Assembly only. If the party wins in Assembly polls, there will be possibility of getting berth in the Cabinet. The YSRCP is facing a peculiar situation. Most of regional parties in the country have joined either INDIA block or the NDA. Whereas the YSRCP gave outside support to the BJP-led NDA government on passage of bills in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha while officially keeping out of NDA.

The YSRCP is also not maintaining good relations with Congress either for a long time due to various reasons. Against this backdrop, the YSRCP senior leaders who win the Lok Sabha elections will have little chance of becoming ministers in the Union Cabinet.

The TDP-Jana Sena alliance is already in the NDA. So, there is no scope for YSRCP to join the alliance in near future. Compared to the YSRCP, the NDA alliance leaders are very strongly lobbying to contest the Lok Sabha polls. The aspirants have to wait one or two days for the release of BJP list of contestants.

There are reports that BJP leaders, who migrated from other parties have edge in landing tickets. On the other hand, the BJP leaders, who had been associated with the party for a long time, are also lobbying intensely for a chance.