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There are certain constituencies in Andhra Pradesh that rely entirely on the individualistic prowess of the candidates rather than the party image, as a whole. If we look at the AP polling trends, the ruling party YSR Congress has handed over two such constituencies to TDP on a golden platter. Those two constituencies are Addanki and Parchur.
In Addanki, TDP fielded sitting MLA Gottipati Ravi Kumar who has a clean mass image. He was previously with Congress and contested from Addanki in 2004 and 09, before moving to YCP in 2014. He then found a stable harbor in Telugu Desam and contested on TDP ticket in 2019. He won as Addanki MLA three consecutive times, regardless of which party he is in, showing that his own image is bigger than any party’s image in Addanki.
If Gottipati Ravi’s dominance in Addanki isn’t assertive enough, YSR Congress fielded an outsider in the form of Chinna Hanimi Reddy. YCP brought him from Guntur’s Peddakurapadu to contest against a mass leader like Ravi in Addanki and this pretty much sealed the deal for TDP here. After Hanimi Reddy was announced as the candidate, many YCP cadres and tier 2 leaders joined Telugu Desam, confirming Ravi’s win even before the election.
Then we have Parchur which has Eluru Sambasiva Rao in the contest on TDP’s behalf. After a winning debut here in 2014 on a TDP ticket, he withstood a strong YCP wave in 2019 and again won from here. YCP named Yedama Balaji as their candidate here for the 2024 election and he has a bad reputation of having been with every major political party in AP. Adding to that Eluri Sambasiva Rao is in red-hot form here and the internal talk is that his big-margin win here is only a formality.
YCP’s poor candidate selection and the individual prowess of the TDP candidates in the two constituencies have pretty much decided the result in favor of TDP even before the election.
