The ruling party played the development card; Naidu’s visit boosts morale of TDP workers
The first election for the two-year-old Kuppam Municipality with 25 wards and 39,000 voters is set to see a battle between the ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) and the main opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP).
Till the 2019 assembly elections, Kuppam region TDP national president N. Chandrababu Naidu’s stronghold remained. Since 1989, the question of TDP losing in Kuppam has not arisen. However, Mr Naidu’s victory margin fell from 50,000 in 2014 to 30,000 in 2019, which shook the morale of the party workers.
YSRCP workers in Kuppam, led by Panchayat Raj Minister P. Ramachandra Reddy, are now seeing Mr Naidu’s citadel as a ‘falling fortress’ that can be easily captured. Now, as the first municipal election in Kuppam is the right time to attack Mr. Naidu’s stronghold, so does the mood of the ruling party workers. However, political experts say that the morale of the TDP workers, who are in despair after Mr Naidu’s two-day visit to Kuppam on October 29 and 30, has boosted the morale.
The principal panchayat of Kuppam was upgraded to a municipality in 2019. The civic body with a population of 65 lakhs is divided into 25 wards in nine panchayats. Women (19,891) out of a total of 39,261 voters are slightly more than men.
Minister P. Ramachandra Reddy has visited Kuppam half a dozen times during the YSRCP’s last two-and-a-half years in office. His son and Rajaampeta MP P. Mithun Reddy recently visited the constituency and promised that drinking water would be provided from the Handi-Niva project, apart from other development projects worth several crores. YSRCP defeated TDP in MPTC, ZPTC and Panchayat elections. Riding on the success, YSRCP workers are confident of winning Kuppam by a huge margin.
Political pundits say TDP workers spent two-and-a-half years in despair over the absence of any ‘guardian angel’. A general observation is that even though the TDP vote bank in Kuppam is still solid, there is a void in the local leadership, which was seen as a major reason for the TDP’s defeat in the MPTC, ZPTC and Panchayat elections. The Kupam municipal election result will depend on how the TDP cadre will respond to Mr Naidu’s clarion call to win all 25 municipal wards, he says.
Meanwhile, Chittoor Superintendent of Police S. Senthil Kumar along with senior police officers of Chittoor and Palamaner on Wednesday inspected the arrangements being made for filing nominations.
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