Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party has finalised its alliance and brought the Telugu Desam Party and Jana Sena Party into the National Democratic Alliance's fold, the Congress party in Andhra Pradesh is still soliciting leaders to join its party. B Manickam Tagore, MP and Andhra Pradesh in-charge for the Congress said, "Our party is looking to re-establish its bond with the people of Andhra Pradesh and we are sure to do better in the coming polls."
New Delhi, Feb 02 (ANI): Andhra Pradesh Congress president YS Sharmila meets party president Mallikarjun Kharge, in New Delhi on Friday. (ANI Photo) (YS Sharmila-X)
The Indian National Congress is perhaps at its weakest ever in Andhra Pradesh since the state came to be in 1952. Even at the height of the Emergency in 1977, when the rest of India voted the Janata Party to power, the undivided AP sent a record 41 of the total 42 parliamentarians.
The party’s vote share after the 2019 general elections stood at a meagre 1.55% falling from 36.55% in 2009 when the party sent 33 MPs and aided the formation of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance II (UPA) at the Centre. The diminution and decline of the Congress in Andhra, its leaders say, are circumstantial. Political experts however say the issue is organisational and systemic.
This wasn't always the case.
In many parts of Andhra and Telangana, Indira Gandhi is still recalled as a maternal figure, a protector who brought people out of poverty and brought in land reforms. That she contested an election from Medak (now in Telangana) is not yet forgotten by dispossessed farmers whose lands were used for the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project. They sparred with officials and ministers in the former TS chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s government saying the lands they owned were those granted by ‘Indiramma’.
YS Sharmila was named Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief in the third week of January 2024 after a long line of uninspiring chiefs, most likely on account of her being the daughter of the late chief minister of AP, YS Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR).
No leader of the Congress has been able to inspire as much confidence as the late YSR. His death in a tragic chopper accident in the Nallamalla forest region in September 2009 changed the political scene in Andhra Pradesh. YSR did not lose a single election since he first became a legislator in 1978 and it was not before Rajiv Gandhi made him PCC president of Andhra Pradesh in 1984. For 20 years, until he became chief minister in 2004 after the legendary 1,500 km padayatra in the scorching summer of 2003, he is known to have built the party and kept his flock close even during the 10 years of his bete noir N Chandrababu Naidu’s rule.
YSR was a consummate leader and enjoyed mass appeal.
“When I went to Delhi to attend the first session of the parliament after we won the general election in 2009, both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and defence minister AK Antony shook hands with me saying ‘We have come to power because of your leader’,” said Madhu Yaskhi Goud, senior leader, and former MP who is now with the Telangana unit of the Congress. YSR was known to stand up to the Congress leadership on issues about the state and the region. He wrote 16 letters to Manmohan Singh asking for a relook of the royalty agreement between the Government of India, AP, Reliance India Limited and state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) over possible losses to the exchequer. YSR’s ability to fund the party’s elections in other states also won him stature within the Congress.
YSR’s death caused a vacuum in the party. That an ageing K Rosaiah and a lacklustre, loyalist N Kiran Kumar Reddy, both of whom were made chief ministers after YSR’s passing, were opposed to the creation of Telangana did not help the Congress’ cause when the new state was created in 2014.
“The Congress is yet to find a replacement for an aggressive Jagan Mohan Reddy who chipped away at the Congress base taking its best leaders with him. Sharmila’s PCC presidentship is fraught with many loopholes,” Dr Chandrasekhar, former professor of politics at the Sri Krishnadevaraya University in Anantapur, said.
The Telangana unit of Congress engaged in a smear campaign against YSR in 2019 and 2023 because the former chief minister was strongly opposed to the idea of statehood for Telangana. By distancing themselves from YSR and his legacy, the Telangana Pradesh Congress attempted to own the decision of having created the state under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in 2014. Sharmila, who continues to be at odds with her brother, floated her outfit, YSR Telangana Party in 2021, to try her luck in Telangana. She threw her ring in the hat saying she belonged to Hyderabad; she was a "mulki" and had been a resident of the city for more than 15 years. However, she surprised everyone by withdrawing nominations at the last minute of all her 119 candidates and did not contest the election last year. Now, being back in Andhra Pradesh, merging her outfit with the Congress in January this year, she is seen as a greenhorn with little political acumen or skill to lead a party.
“They have lost their connection with the people. In the last ten years, the Congress has not staged a protest worth remembering in any village in Andhra taking up people’s causes. Neither has its leadership created an alternate platform or forum for itself or the people to voice their concerns against the ruling dispensation,” said Chandrasekhar.
Post bifurcation of the state in 2014, it named Sake Sailajanath as PCC president. The party was so disconnected from its leadership that it was not even aware of Sailajanath’s long battle with lung cancer until it was made known to them much later. He was then replaced by Raghuveera Reddy, a tall leader from Anantapur who was in the party but had gone back to his main vocation: agriculture. Raghuveera Reddy was often seen on his moped tending to his farms. "He was himself surprised to be named the next PCC President,” said a Congress leader from Telangana who was close to Reddy. Then came Gidugu Rudraraju, a former MLC, and YS Sharmila soon after.
“As far as Andhra goes, there are no reasons for anyone to vote for the party, so there are no reasons for anyone to stay in the party. It will be years before there is A Congress resurgence in the state because the Bharatiya Janata Party is looking to gain a toehold in AP,” said Susarla Nagesh, an analyst who has tracked elections since the 1970s, summing the party’s current predicament in Andhra Pradesh.
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