BJP pins hopes on Gokaraju

Vijayawada: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is testing its time in alliance with the Telugu Desam is pinning its hopes on the party nominee for Narasarapur Lok Sabha constituency, Gokaraju Gangaraju, besides the two Assembly seats of Kaikaluru in Krishna district and Narasaraopet in Guntur district.

Gangaraju, a leading industrialist in the State and a strong sympathiser of the Viswa Hindu Parishad, was able to make inroads and win the voters. Though settled in Vijayawada, he has his roots from this segment which had helped him restore his contacts and reach the voters. The BJP did its best to make him a winning candidate as the sitting MP and the Congress nominee Kanumuri Bapiraju had almost given up his fight making it just a one-to-one between the BJP and the YSR Congress.

The party top leaders have addressed the meetings including Narendra Modi here while the top VHP functionaries have camped here monitoring the campaign. Keeping all these factors, the BJP is pinning all its hopes on Gangaraju wresting the seat in the toughest fight against Vanka Ravindranadh of the YSR Congress.

The party is also banking on Kaikaluru and Narasaraopet Assembly constituencies where it could build the coordination between the TD and the BJP cadre from top to bottom. Though the party is contesting in four Assembly segments – Tadepalligudem, Kaikaluru, Vijayawada West and Narasaraopet - in the central coastal districts, the leadership had lost the hopes on Tadepalligudem and Vijayawada West where it could not build coordination between the two alliance partners. However, it could manage to bring the leaders and cadre of the two parties at Kaikaluru and Narasaraopet and are banking on these two candidates to win their seats. Interestingly, the party was able to get the star campaigner and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan to these two places, which the party leadership asserts, had improved the chances.

The BJP had fielded former MLC Kamineni Srinivas from Kaikaluru and Nallabothu Venkatrao at Narasraopet and the TD leaders there, after the initial dissidence, have come to terms with the candidates and joined the campaign, which is the reason for the BJP to look at these two seats. Interestingly from the TD side too, the Eluru Lok Sabha nominee and former minister Maganti Venkateswara Rao (Babu) and Narasaraopet nominee Rayapati Sambasiva Rao have worked hard to consol the dissidents and put the campaign on the track. “We are confident of winning all the four Assembly and the one Lok Sabha seats in the central coastal districts of West Godavari, Krishna and Guntur.

We were able to build the coordination and conduct campaign together. The presence of Narendra Modi and Pawan Kalyan, besides the TD chief Chandrababu Naidu had helped the party to get an edge over the rivals,” asserted the party senior leader U Srinivasa Raju.