Close on heels after announcing a poll pact with the Bharatiya Janata party for the upcoming assembly and parliament elections in Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu Desam party led by Nara Chandra Babu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan’s Janasena mutually decided the sharing of seats for the three parties after going into huddle with Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Baijayanth Panda ( Vice President of BJP) late in the night at Amaravati on Monday.
As per an official press release, BJP snatched away a total of 6 MPs seats and 10 MLAs out of the 25 MPs and 175 MLAs of Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, the TDP will contest 144 assembly seats and 17 parliament seats. Pawan Kalyan agreed to sacrifice a few more seats that were previously allotted to his Janasena party which will now field candidates only in 2 MP segments and 21 MLA constituencies.
The seat sharing was finalized after having several deliberations in Delhi last week by both Pawan Kalyan and Chandra Babu Naidu with Amit Shah and JP Nadda. It is a known fact that both the TDP and JSP have already announced 99 candidates in the first list. As the seat sharing is finalized, the remaining candidates for assembly and parliament segments will be revealed in a few more days.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the BJP might get to contest from parliament segments of Araku, Rajahmundry, Anakapalle, Tirupati, Narasapuram and one more seat while Jana sena from Machilipatnam and Kakinada.
All three parties contested together in 2014 and won the people’s mandate with a decisive victory. But, after a fallout with the Modi government, Naidu walked out of the NDA alliance in 2018. Pawan Kalyan also severed ties with the TDP in 2019 but joined back into the NDA in 2020.
Following the arrest of Naidu in September last year, Pawan Kalyan extended support to him and announced an alliance with the TDP to dethrone Jagan Mohan Reddy’s government. With the BJP back in the fold, it is going to be a repeat of the 2014 political atmosphere in the state.