Andhra Pradesh is witnessing interesting developments ahead of the Assembly elections next year with former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu meeting top election strategist Prashant Kishor days after the TDP-JSP alliance sounded the poll bugle.
Hoping that the results of Telangana elections will be repeated in Andhra Pradesh, Naidu is making swift moves to consolidate.
Prashant Kishor landed in Vijayawada along with Telugu Desam Party (TDP) General Secretary Nara Lokesh by a special aircraft and then drove to Amaravati for a meeting with Naidu on Saturday.
And the three-hour long meeting, which was also attended by TDP’s current strategists, took the state politics by storm.
Though Prashant Kishor termed it only as a courtesy call with a senior politician, its timing has sparked speculation that TDP has roped him in as a mentor for the strategists.
It was Prashant Kishor who had helped the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) wrest power from the TDP in 2019. The founder of the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) had played a key role in devising the strategy that led to the landslide victory of the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led party.
The YSRCP had bagged 151 seats in the 175-member Assembly and also won 22 out of 25 Lok Sabha seats the same year. This was the best result I-PAC had got in any campaign in terms of seats.
In the strategist’s own words, working with the YSRCP was a commitment he had given to Jagan Mohan Reddy. As the mentor and advisor of I-PAC, he ensured successful execution of the poll strategy.
Before taking a plunge into politics in 2018, Prashant Kishor had declared that he would not campaign for anyone, but he completed the assignment with the YSRCP as he had made the commitment to Jagan Reddy earlier.
A great admirer of Jagan Reddy's father and late Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, he had told the YSRCP leader once that he would be happy to help the party.
They started working in 2017 with the political strategist personally holding a series of strategy sessions with Jagan Reddy and other senior party leaders.
This was followed by the I-PAC team launching a series of campaigns for the party to strengthen the organisation and train the party workers. In a period spanning 709 days, I-PAC managed 35 campaigns, including 18 online.
The political consulting firm was instrumental in setting the strategy for the party and creating the narrative, which eventually led to YSRCP's victory.
Under this strategy, the party reached out to people and established a direct connection with the voters. Jagan's 14-month-long 'padayatra' was part of this effort.
With Assembly elections only 4-5 months away along with the Lok Sabha polls, Prashant Kishor’s meeting with Naidu has created ripples in state politics.
While I-PAC headed by Rishi Rai Singh has clarified that it will continue to work to secure a thumping victory for YSRCP again in 2024, there are indications that Prashant Kishor may mentor the Shantanu Singh-led team which is currently handling TDP’s campaign.
YSRCP too reacted to the development, but with sarcasm.
"If the material itself lacks quality, what can be expected from a craftsman,” asked Irrigation Minister and YSRCP leader Ambati Rambabu.
“This PK or that PK (Naidu’s alliance partner Pawan Kalyan) cannot help save the TDP. The party is like a dead body, no PK can revive it,” remarked Rambabu.
He underscored the irony of the TDP's engagement with a political strategist it had previously criticised.
“Ironically, it is the same political party that had previously criticised and disparaged Kishor, referring to him as a 'Bihar dacoit',” he said.
Rambabu also recalled that Naidu had previously attributed incidents like attack on Jagan Reddy at Visakhapatnam airport, Vivekananda Reddy's murder, and the creation of communal tensions to what he deemed as political gimmicks orchestrated by Prashant Kishor.
There have been speculation for the last few months that PK, as Prashant Kishor is popularly known in political circles, will help devise a strategy for TDP this time.
He was reportedly persuaded by Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to help Chandrababu Naidu.
The talks reportedly started in June 2021, after TMC’s massive win in the West Bengal Assembly elections.
Whether PK will help Naidu to do what Jagan did in 2019 is a million-dollar question.
Political observers say that it will be too early to predict the impact the PK factor may have. They say this will depend on many other factors, including the extent of his involvement in preparing the poll strategy.
Naidu’s meeting with PK comes a couple of days after the massive public meeting in Vizianagaram district, where he shared the dais with Jana Sena Party (JSP) leader and actor Pawan Kalyan.
TDP and JSP have already announced that they will have an alliance for the coming elections.
The alliance with JSP has come as a boost for TDP as the party is feeling the heat with the arrest of Naidu in the AP State Skill Development Corporation case. The 73-year-old was arrested by the CID in September and sent to jail.
It was after meeting Naidu in Rajahmundry Jail that Pawan Kalyan announced that JSP will contest the coming elections in alliance with the TDP.
The stakes will be high for Naidu in the coming elections. He has already declared that this will be his last electoral battle. It will be interesting to see how many seats the TDP will be ready to leave for its alliance partner and what will be Pawan Kalyan’s expectations.
The huge success of the recent public meeting organised to mark the culmination of Lokesh’s state-wide padayatra has boosted the morale of the party and its leaders have started claiming that TDP will come back to power.
Naidu, who was released on bail last month, is hopeful that Andhra Pradesh will see a repeat of Telangana.
Naidu has said that what happened to those who acted with highhandedness in Telangana, will repeat in Andhra Pradesh in the ensuing elections.
In Telangana, the KCR-led Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) lost power to the Congress, and the TDP expects a similar anti-incumbency trend in Andhra Pradesh.
The TDP chief, who spent 52 days in jail, is also trying to play the sympathy card.
“I have not committed any mistake in my 45 years of political life, but still I was sent to jail in the AP State Skill Development Corporation case. I have really suffered mentally for no fault of mine,” Naidu said in his first public comments after the court relaxed the bail conditions.
The former Chief Minister also alleged that those who are raising their voice against the failures of the YSRC government are being harassed by foisting false cases.
“Power should not get into one’s mind. Jagan Mohan Reddy should think about what will be his future in the next three months,” said Naidu.
