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Kapu leaders to join forces for more political share in Andhra Pradesh
The Kapu leaders, representing parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, Telugu Desam Party and the Jana Sena Party, held a virtual meeting on January 23 and decided to form an “Aikya Vedika” (joint forum)
Leaders of Kapu community, a politically strong caste group in Andhra Pradesh, are planning to come together, setting aside their political affiliations, to form a pressure group with an aim to achieve what they say their legitimate share in political power in the state in the coming years.
The Kapu leaders, representing parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, Telugu Desam Party and the Jana Sena Party, held a virtual meeting on January 23 and decided to form an “Aikya Vedika” (joint forum), which, they said, would do intense lobbying with their respective parties and strive to achieve due share of seats for the community in the next assembly and parliament elections.
A Kapu leader familiar with the development said the meeting was attended by TDP legislator from Visakhapatnam Ganta Srinivasa Rao and former TDP MLA Bonda Umamaheshwara Rao, former Congress minister Vatti Vasanth Kumar, retired IAS officer and former Tamil Nadu chief secretary Rammohan Rao, among others. “The Kapu leaders from ruling YSR Congress party stayed away from the meeting,” he said.
This was the second meeting held by the Kapu community in the recent past. In December, too, some Kapu leaders, including retired joint director of Central Bureau of Investigation V V Lakshminarayana and former BJP state president Kanna Lakshminarayana, had a meeting at a star hotel in Hyderabad to discuss the strategy to protect the political interests of the community.
“A steering committee will be formed to work out the strategy on achieving political power for Kapus in the next elections. Though it is a long way to travel, the ultimate objective of the effort is to grab power in the coming years,” the Kapu leader said. He said there would be yet another meeting in February to finalise the structure of the Aikya Vedika, which would be a sort of pressure group. It would strive to win as many seats as possible in the next elections.
A politically strong community in Andhra Pradesh, Kapus and their affiliated caste groups, such as Balijas, Telagas and Ontaris, constitute 15.2 per cent of the total population in the state. While they are spread all over the state, East and West Godavari districts are considered as strongholds of the Kapus.
Traditionally, the Kapus, because of their rivalry with another predominant caste group, Kammas, who account for 4.8 per cent of the total population, had voted for the Congress.
However, Kapus made an attempt to come together as a consolidated vote bank in 2008 when prominent Telugu film actor Chiranjeevi floated a new political outfit Praja Rajyam Party. It generated a lot of euphoria in the community.
But the Praja Rajyam Party failed to put up an impressive show in the elections. It could win only 18 out of 294 assembly seats and get 17.5 per cent vote share. Chiranjeevi could not sustain the party for long and merged it with the Congress in February 2011.
In 2014, Chiranjeevi’s younger brother Pawan Kalyan floated the Jana Sena Party, but he did not contest the elections in AP post-bifurcation of combined AP. He supported the BJP-TDP combine.
In 2019 elections, however, Jana Sena contested in alliance with the Left and the Bahujan Samaj Party but failed to make any impact. It could win only one MLA seat with a vote share of only 5.54 per cent.
There was a talk that Jana Sena would consolidate the Kapu votes, but the community had no faith on him after seeing his elder brother Chiranjeevi’s failed experiment. Instead, they voted largely in favour of the YSRC led by Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, which won 27 out of 34 seats in East and West Godavari districts. Pawan Kalyan himself lost in the Kapu-dominated constituencies like Bhimavaram and Gajuwaka.
“Having seen the experiments of Chiranjeevi and Pawan Kalyan, we have realised that Kapus need to rework their strategies if they have to come to power. The Aikya Vedika is the first step to consolidate the Kapu vote bank. If the community remains united and turns into a pressure group, it can achieve its objective one day or the other,” the Kapu leader said.
