The Opposition TDP seems to have taken its toll from the Tirupati Lok Sabha by-election, polling for which was held on Saturday.
Though TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu alleges impersonation by the ruling YSR Congress, the exit-poll survey found that the TDP’s voting had come down from 38 per cent in the Municipal elections to 28 per cent now.
The TDP had polled around 39 per cent votes in the 2019 general elections winning just 23 Assembly seats.
Though the MPTC and ZPTC elections too were held and the TDP had announced its boycott in the eleventh hour and the results are yet to be out due to court cases, the Tirupati by-election suggests that the TDP’s vote share had further gone down.
Chandrababu Naidu and his son Lokesh’s regular and continued attack on Jagan Mohan Reddy is not going well down the lane, if one goes by the falling voting percentage of the party.
It is time that Chandrababu Naidu should work with different syllabus to counter Jagan Mohan Reddy, before he loses this 28 per cent patronage of the voters by the turn of 2024.
Meanwhile, the ruling YSR Congress is believed to have grabbed 64 per cent of voters in Tirupati, anticipating a big win for Dr M Gurumurthy.
The BJP, which had pinned its hopes on Tirupati for improving its presence in AP, is ending up by getting just 6 to 7 per cent votes.
The BJP should thank its ally, the Jana Sena, for whatever votes it secured in the Tirupati elections. But for Jana Sena’s support, the BJP’s share would have remained at 3 per cent, the observers say.
