Hyderabad: Politically, 2014 will go down as one that saw the most strange political combination in Andhra Pradesh.
Actor-cum Jana Sena founder who likes Che Guevara, Pawan Kalyan, tied up with Chandrababu Naidu, known to be an “opportunistic secularist”, and Narendra Modi, with his Hindutva background.
The political rivals of Coastal AP, the financially mighty Kammas and the numerically strong Kapus, joined hands to defeat Jagan Mohan Reddy and his Dalit-dominated YSR Congress.
The Modi-Naidu-Pawan combo crushed Mr Reddy in the general elections as the last 10 days of campaigning saw a huge swing.
Pawan Kalyan’s speeches included punch dialogues like “Congress Hatao Desh Bachao” (Get rid of the Congress and save the country).
Mr Modi’s call to choose between “Scamandhra and Swarnandhra” paved the way for Mr Naidu and prevented Andhra Pradesh from “Pulivendula politics”.
The trio had a whirlwind tour in the state sharing the dais. Mr Modi said that Pawan Kalyan, Mr Naidu and his combine would not be three people, but 111. “We are three people standing, but it will be 111 and not three. All arithmetic will go wrong”.
Interestingly Pawan Kalyan didn’t contest the elections while Mr Naidu, holding a “magic wand”, went on to woo voters with “lakhs of crores worth of promises”.
Mr Reddy, who had dared Congress president Sonia Gandhi after the death of his father, Y.S Rajasekhar Reddy, and even went to jail for the CBI cases booked by the Congress government, could not take the CM’s gaddi. Sympathy for the YSR and Mr Reddy’s game plan Mr couldn’t withstand Naidu’s call for development and his experience in governance. People, thus, chose the Seemandhra veteran over the Seemandhra cub.
With Mr Reddy’s graph going on a downward spiral, the TD-BJP combination won majority in the Assembly election with 108 out of 175 seats.
The partners also won 17 seats in Lok Sabha. With 16 seats, the Telugu Desam is the BJP’s second-largest ally in Parliament.
As had been exhorted by Pawan Kalyan, the Congress vanished from AP, but his slogan has come back to haunt him as one of his fans wrote a book “Pavan Hatao Politics Bachao” (Get rid of Pawan, save politics). The actor, who had claimed that he would question injustice by the government, hasn’t been heard from since the new government took over.
Many politicians suffered embarrassment in 2014 and many, like Mr Reddy, are still struggling to wipe the state clean while Mr Naidu is struggling to keep his promises.
