Kakinada is a picturesque, sleepy town next to the sea on the eastern coast. Not as big as Visakhapatnam or Vijaywada, Kakinada nevertheless represents and symbolises what people in Andhra Pradesh think and feel about issues that engage them. There are quite a few cutouts and posters of Y S Sharmila, who was suddenly catapulted as president of the Andhra unit of the Congress. Some die-hard Congress supporters nurse fond hopes that their new leader, Sharmila, will conjure up magic and revive the Congress the way it has been spectacularly revived in neighbouring Telangana that was carved out of a unified Andhra Pradesh in 2014 by the UPA regime amid much acrimony and bitterness. Their contention: Sharmila is as strong an inheritor of the legacy of late Y S R Reddy as her brother Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, the sitting chief minister of the state. Follow full coverage of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Naren Reddy is a reluctant journalist who devotes more time to running an NGO that helps local fishermen with new technology. As the author tells Reddy about what Congress supporters are suggesting, he first smiles and then breaks into hysterical laughter. He talks to people at the tea stall in Telugu and they all laugh. He says: “It is not a crime to nurture illusions and delusions. Let whatever few Congress supporters are left in the state be delusional. But you see, as of now, the Congress is virtually extinct in Andhra and there is no chance of any early recovery”.
According to him and many others in Kakinada, the people of Andhra feel the Congress party betrayed them badly by the unseemly and cynical manner in which it carved out Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh. Not only are people still hurt, but they are outraged by the loss of Hyderabad and the failure of the central government to keep its promise of delivering a special financial package. Subramayam Duvvuri is a senior journalist based in Kakinada who also dabbles with psephology. He says that folks in Andhra are very angry with the BJP too. “But the BJP was never more than a marginal player in the state. It is the Congress that was a formidable force in the state and it has lost everything. Voters of unified Andhra had preferred the Congress even after the post Emergency Lok Sabha elections as also in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections when the Bofors scam felled the Rajiv Gandhi government. That era is now gone forever”.
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The troubles for the Congress started soon after it won a famous repeat victory in the 2009 assembly elections under the leadership of popular sitting chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. Unfortunately, YSR died in a helicopter crash just a few months after the elections. YSR was very close to the Gandhi family. His son Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was an impetuous young man who presumed the Gandhis will pick him as the natural inheritor and successor. He even announced a “Yatra” across the state to pay homage to his father. The Congress top brass would have none of it. It was made very clear to Jagan that there was no chance of him becoming chief minister. Relations soured and reached a point of no return when Jagan’s Yatra became a successful rallying point. Jagan Reddy broke away from the Congress and formed the YSR Congress in 2011. Most Congress supporters started making a beeline for the new party. A rattled Congress unleashed the CBI and Jagan Reddy was arrested in a disproportionate assets case and spent many months behind bars. People in Andhra started rejecting the Congress since then. Soon after that came the process of the formation of the separate state of Telangana, which antagonised the locals even more. By the time elections approached in 2014, the Congress was intensely disliked by the citizens of Andhra. Like with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, almost all Congress supporters shifted lock, stock and barrel to the YSR Congress.
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{{/usCountry}}The troubles for the Congress started soon after it won a famous repeat victory in the 2009 assembly elections under the leadership of popular sitting chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. Unfortunately, YSR died in a helicopter crash just a few months after the elections. YSR was very close to the Gandhi family. His son Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was an impetuous young man who presumed the Gandhis will pick him as the natural inheritor and successor. He even announced a “Yatra” across the state to pay homage to his father. The Congress top brass would have none of it. It was made very clear to Jagan that there was no chance of him becoming chief minister. Relations soured and reached a point of no return when Jagan’s Yatra became a successful rallying point. Jagan Reddy broke away from the Congress and formed the YSR Congress in 2011. Most Congress supporters started making a beeline for the new party. A rattled Congress unleashed the CBI and Jagan Reddy was arrested in a disproportionate assets case and spent many months behind bars. People in Andhra started rejecting the Congress since then. Soon after that came the process of the formation of the separate state of Telangana, which antagonised the locals even more. By the time elections approached in 2014, the Congress was intensely disliked by the citizens of Andhra. Like with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, almost all Congress supporters shifted lock, stock and barrel to the YSR Congress.
Also Read | Jagan pushes for welfare work with an eye on Andhra elections
{{/usCountry}}Ten years after that, the Congress is hoping to project Y S Sharmila as the YSR daughter who deserves the legacy and the “inheritance”. But it seems too tall a mountain for Sharmila to climb. In 2014, the Congress got an 11.6% vote share in the Lok Sabha and 24% in the assembly elections, most of it coming from Telangana. By 2019, the vote share crashed to 1.3% and 1.1% respectively. The numbers tell their story.
(Sutanu Guru has been a journalist and author for 35 years. He is the executive director, CVoter Foundation. This is part of a series of field reports from all corners of India in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections that aim to understand how the country is changing in fundamental ways)