Underestimating Chandrababu Naidu will be the biggest mistake which either Pawan Kalyan or YS Jagan Mohan Reddy would have ever made. YS Jagan already knows this from his 2014 experience.
Chandrababu Naidu is a master at ‘Wave Management’. What this means is that he has this uncanny ability to deflate the immense popularity of the Opposition and tune the voters towards his way in a subtle manner.
The primary tool for him in this exercise is naturally the yellow media. After dethroning NTR, public sympathy was heavily in favour of Lakshmi Parvathi and there were huge turnouts for her rallies and public meetings. But when the elections came, people voted for the TDP.
Similarly, in 2014, Jagan Reddy’s Odarpu Yatra, his imprisonment for 16 months and YSR’s death had created a huge positive buzz for the YSRCP. But when the voting time arrived, it was again CBN who emerged the winner.
Thus, on two occasions, Naidu successfully managed people’s perception to emerge victorious. He has never been a frontrunner, always a pace horse that will time its strides exactly to the point of finish.
Once again, YSJ is the front runner for 2019, but if he becomes complacent or underestimates Naidu because of this, he will definitely regret it.
