It might be too far-fetched an assessment by any political pundit that power star and Jana Sena Party president Pawan Kalyan would become the next chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.
But a section of political observers assess that Pawan’s party will definitely fare much better than Praja Rajyam Party floated by his brother megastar Chiranjeevi in 2009 assembly elections.
According to their assessment, Jana Sena will get 20-25 assembly seats out of 175 assembly seats in AP in 2019 elections, compared to 18 out of 294 assembly seats in the combined state of Andhra Pradesh.
In terms of percentage of votes, Jana Sena Party might get more than 20 per cent of total votes to be polled, as against 15.6 per cent of votes secured by Praja Rajyam Party.
“As the things stand now, Pawan Kalyan will win most his seats in north coastal Andhra, East and West Godavari districts, besides Anantapur in Rayalaseema,” a Kapu leader from West Godavari said.
Now, the question is which party does Pawan Kalyan damage most?
There is a general feeling that Jana Sena would split the anti-establishment vote, which would indirectly benefit the Telugu Desam Party.
However, there is also a section of political analysts who say that Jana Sena will eat into the TDP vote bank in north coastal, Godavari and Rayalaseema districts which had hitherto been the TDP strongholds.
On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party will also cause considerable damage to the TDP vote bank in isolated pockets.
“It appears Jagan will scrape through with thin majority over the TDP, if not winning a big number of seats,” the leader said.
