Within hours of Andhra Pradesh deputy chief minister and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan announcing his divorce from his third wife, the Telugu Desam, the leading party in the National Democratic Alliance in the state, warned its cadre and sympathisers against making any adverse comments on the deputy chief minister’s decision.
While respect for Mr Pawan’s privacy may have played a role in TD’s quick response, it could also be seen as a precautionary move by chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu to ensure that the equilibrium between the two parties remains intact till the 2029 general elections.
Nothing speaks more convincingly of the strong understanding among the two alliance partners than the outcome of the recently held urban and rural local body polls. The TD and Jana Sena second-rung leadership wholeheartedly supported each other.
But for the TD’s obsession with paying former chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy back in the same coin by forcing unanimous elections in the latter’s strongholds, questions would not have been raised about the genuineness of the poll process in a few pockets.
The NDA is also happy to see that its electorate has strongly supported the alliance with the sole objective of keeping YSR Congress at bay. The result: The NDA won 94 out of 100 ULBs and conceded just one out of 28 Zilla Parishads to its rival.
The bad news for Jagan Mohan Reddy is that his party’s performance worsened compared to the 2024 Assembly elections. The NDA’s vote percentage went up by 3.6 percentage points, and Jagan’s fell by 6.25 percentage points in the local polls, strengthening the narrative that people, particularly neutral voters, are still averse to the YSRC.
However, all is not rosy for the TD-led government. While it has undoubtedly put the state back on track to attract industrial and IT investments, it continues to face a financial crunch. Several of its MLAs are drawing public ire over allegations of corruption, and failure to rein them in could prove costly to the alliance.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
