With the Election Commission sounding the bugle for Lok Sabha elections and Andhra Pradesh assembly elections on April 11, major political parties – Telugu Desam Party, YSR Congress party and for that matter, even Jana Sena Party, are getting ready for the battle.
They have already begun selection of candidates for the LS and assembly seats and have almost completed the process except in some key constituencies.
For that matter, Jana Sena party of actor Pawan Kalyan was the first to announce the list of candidates for LS polls, thought it has just two names, as of now.
But, the so-called two national parties – Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party – are virtually struggling to find suitable candidates to fight the assembly as well as Lok Sabha elections.
Majority of their senior leaders who have money and cadre power have already joined the other three parties.
The Congress hardly has any credible leaders, except a few like M M Pallam Raju, N Kiran Kumar Reddy, N Raghuveera Reddy, Chinta Mohan etc.
Even those handful of leaders are not keen on contesting the elections, for the simple reason that they do not have money power and if they have, they don’t want to waste their money, since it is difficult to win any seat.
As far as the BJP is concerned, the party leaders are putting up a brave front of winning a few seats with a hope that Narendra Modi magic would work in Andhra Pradesh, too.
But there are not enough candidates for the party to fight the elections. Some of them are already started looking towards the TDP or YSR Congress party.
So pathetic is the situation in both the national parties is that they have now started calling for applications for the MP and MLA seats, just a week before the commencement of the nomination process!
