It seems Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy has realised that all his efforts to defeat Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan and to prevent him from entering the Assembly failed. In a desperate move and as a last minute effort, on the last day of campaign he announced on Saturday that he would make Vanga Geetha, who is contesting against Pawan Kalyan as YCP candidate, as Deputy Chief Minister.
It may be recalled that in the 2019 elections he had made similar announcements in several constituencies promising to make those candidates as ministers, if people elected them. One among them was Ramakrishna Reddy, who defeated Nara Lokesh in Mangalagiri. But, most of Jagan’s such promises were not fulfilled.
In Pithapuram also, Jagan fielded veteran Kapu leader Mudragada Padmanabham only to defeat Pawan Kalyan. But that experiment turned out to be counter-productive, as Padmanabham’s own daughter Kranthi found fault with father and extended support to Pawan Kalyan.
It is an open secret that Jaganmohan Reddy made all round efforts to defeat mainly two leaders in the state- first TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu in Kuppam and Pawan Kalyan in Pithapuram. He used all tactics and used goons that helped him to get some positive results in local bodies polls in Kuppam. However, later he failed to maintain that hype.
Though the most resourceful minister in his cabinet Dr P Ramachandra Reddy was assigned the task of defeating Chandrababu in Kuppam, they realised later that would be an impossible task.
Later, CM Jagan seems to be very angry with Pawan Kalyan for proposing an alliance between TDP, Jana Sena and BJP, to avoid division of anti- YCP votes. His determined efforts succeeded in making this alliance a formidable combination. That makes Jagan panic. His tactics to influence top BJP leaders also failed to yield results.
CM Jagan mostly trusted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah that they would come to his rescue in making this alliance meaningless, due to his clout with them. In the beginning though BJP is officially allied with them, its top leaders maintained distance.
However, sensing public mood against CM Jagan, both Modi and Amit Shah were forced to join the alliance bitterly criticising Jagan’s regime that of corrupt and ignored development of the state. The Election Commission of India (ECI) was also forced to respond to complaints and transfer DGP and Anantapur DIG, besides blocking distribution of over Rs 14,000 crore just before polling for beneficiaries.