It has been nearly three months since the YSR Congress Party, led by former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, lost power in the state to the Telugu Desam Party-led National Democratic Alliance by a huge margin.
The party leadership has not yet undertaken any serious introspection to understand what went wrong in the elections.
Instead, the party leaders, including Jagan, have been trying to project the image that there was nothing wrong with the party or his government, suggesting that there may have been a lot of manipulations and conspiracies behind the YSRCP’s defeat.
However, several candidates from the party are aware of why the people rejected them.
Some of them believe that if the party had provided them with financial support and devised better strategies, they could have put up a stronger fight and not lost so badly, even if the party ultimately lost power.
A YSRCP leader, who was dropped from the assembly elections and forced to contest the Lok Sabha elections, blamed party general secretary Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy for ignoring the needs of the party candidates.
“Instead, Sajjala would demoralize the candidates by saying they were not putting up a strong enough fight in their constituencies. He was supposed to project a better image of the party in the media, but he would undermine the party candidates even in front of the pro-TDP media,” he said.
This YSRCP leader apparently told Sajjala in a private conversation during the election campaign that the opposition TDP candidate was spending a large amount of money, and he was unable to compete with the TDP in terms of expenditure. He sought Sajjala’s advice on how to counter the opposition's strategy.
Sajjala did not offer him any advice, but the very next day, a pro-TDP media outlet carried a report stating that the YSRCP candidate had already given up hope before the polling.
“This was surprising. There was nobody else present when I discussed the issue with Sajjala. So, it was obvious that the information was leaked to the pro-TDP media by none other than Sajjala,” he pointed out.
With leaders like Sajjala dominating the party in Tadepalli, it is no surprise that the party lost the elections by such a large margin. Needless to say, the YSRCP leader who was unhappy with Sajjala quietly left the party recently.
