Amaravati: Happiness knew no bounds for TDP workers across the State as they witnessed the party register a historic victory in Andhra Pradesh. Such a contest and results hadn’t been seen since 1994, when the party won 216 seats of the 294 assembly segments in the undivided Andhra Pradesh. The party had contested in 251 constituencies. By winning 135 seats in the 175 member assembly in 2024 assembly elections, TDP has repeated its feat once again, 30 years later.
In 1994, the party was headed by former chief minister NT Rama Rao, and now the victory lap was led by Chandrababu Naidu.
By limiting the YSRCP’s numbers to 11 seats, the party has not only decimated its arch political rival, but has also made the heads of the leaders roll in YSRCP government. Except Peddireddi Ramachandra Reddy, who represents Punganuru assembly constituency, all the other ministers have taken a drubbing. Even Peddireddi barely limped over the fence by scoring a small winning margin of 6,095 votes.
The first big name to have been trailing during the counting, which came out a little early was that of former Nagari MLA RK Roja, who was serving as the minister for tourism, culture, sports and youth advancement in the YSRCP government.
“A powerful person is someone who converts fears into confidence, setbacks into comebacks, excuses into decisions, mistakes into learnings,” she wrote as the quote of the day on her X handle in the morning.
Whether her cryptic post signaled anything about the result is only known to her, but soon other ministers were also found trailing.
One of them was Kodali Nani, who had served as the former civil supplies and consumer affairs minister. Incidentally, both Roja and Nani started their careers in TDP. Kodali Nani had represented TDP as MLA in 2004 and 2009, before joining YSRCP in 2012. He then went on to win 2014 and 2019 assembly elections on a YSRCP ticket.
Nani lost to TDP candidate Venigandla Ramu by 53,040 votes margin. Roja lost to Gali Bhanu Prakash of TDP by a margin of 45,004 votes. He left the counting center right after the first couple of rounds.
While the list of ministers who have lost is too long, one of the prominent faces in YSRCP to have lost the Lok Sabha election was YSRCP Rajya Sabha MP V Vijayasai Reddy, who lost to Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy of TDP by a margin of 2,45,902 votes from Nellore Lok Sabha segment.
Vijayasai Reddy has been known to be a close confidante of former chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who tendered his resignation to Governor S Abdul Nazeer by afternoon. The latter accepted the resignation on Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, Chandrababu Naidu, who received a congratulatory phone call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier during the day, is expected to be heading to Delhi on Wednesday, to attend the meeting of NDA alliance partners.
Back in the gullies, TDP workers took their sweet revenge. TDP workers could be seen riding a bicycle, dragging along with it a fan tied to a rope and let loose.
Even before the results were announced, the party workers took no time to remove the name board of Dr YSR University of Health Sciences to NTR University of Health Sciences, which was its earlier name, that was changed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy after he assumed power.
Unlike the election day, there were no major incidents of violence reported from AP, except for an isolated incident or two.
Chandrababu Naidu went to congratulate Jana Sena Party chief and Pithapuram MLA Pawan Kalyan at the latter’s party office in Mangalagiri in Guntur district on Tuesday night. The two had a discussion on the prevailing political scenario, and possibly discussed what could be the negotiation points with BJP.
While TDP won 16 Lok Sabha segments in AP, Jana Sena won 2 and BJP 3. YSRCP was restricted to 4 seats.
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