It was only last week that YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy reshuffled the assembly constituencies of several party MLAs to improve their winning prospects.
One such MLA is Vellampalli Srinivas Rao from Vijayawada (West), who was the endowments minister in Jagan’s cabinet till last year. As part of reshuffling, he has been moved to Vijayawada (Central), dropping sitting MLA Malladi Vishnu.
In his place, Jagan gave the party ticket to a minority candidate Shaik Asif in Vijayawada (Wes). Vellampalli did not like the change of constituency, as he was nurturing the constituency for the last four years, but he had no other option.
He apparently made a request with Jagan to retain him in his original constituency, but the chief minister said nothing doing, as the party will lose if Vellampalli contests from Vijayawada (West).
However, there is a threat to Vellampalli’s seat even in Vijayawada (Central), following reports that Kesineni Swetha, daughter of Vijayawada MP Kesineni Nani, is likely to jump into the YSRCP and she might be given the party ticket from Vijayawada (Central).
Both Kesineni and Swetha have announced their resignations from the Telugu Desam Party and though they have not made up their mind which party they would join, YSRCP sources said Jagan is keen on bringing Swetha into the party and give her the ticket to contest the elections.
If Swetha is given the ticket for Vijayawada (Central), Vellampalli will be neither here nor there. There will be some clarity on his position in a day or two, sources said.
