Poaching of leaders keeps TD on tenterhooks, YSRC intensifies ‘Mission Kuppam’

TIRUPATI: The Telugu Desam leadership is on tenterhooks as the ruling YSRC has intensified its poaching on village-level leaders and cadres in Kuppam assembly constituency, the fortress of Chandrababu Naidu.

This is seriously affecting the morale of the TD cadre, mainly as the TD chief has been representing this assembly seat continuously since 1989. Notably, following the back-to-back defeats in gram panchayat and municipal elections in Kuppam, the TD has been trying to activate its cadres to get set for the next elections. In a morale boosting exercise, Naidu had toured Kuppam repeatedly and held meetings with party local leaders. They managed to lure several “YSRC men”. They even took them to Naidu and got them to join the TD in his presence.

Now, in a swift retaliation, the YSRC picked up more than a hundred TD workers from Kuppam villages and brought them to Tirupati last month, to enroll them in the ruling party. The YSRC leaders also lured another batch of 244 TD workers from the Kuppam villages and joined them in YSRC in the presence of Minister Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy at a party programme in Chittoor on Saturday last.

However, TD leaders claimed that this was a bogus show. They said those who have joined the YSRC in Chittoor did not belong to TD. “In a desperate attempt to portray that TD is losing Kuppam, YSRC in-charge and MLC KRG Bharat brought some people to Chittoor and introduced them as TD workers. When the media asked them to show their TD identity cards, they all showed the cards but the names and photos on those cards were not theirs,” a TD leader said.

However, minister Peddireddy claimed that the new entrants from the TD joined the ruling party because they were attracted to the welfare schemes and good governance of CM Jagan. He also announced the name of MLC KRG Bharath as the YSRC candidate for Kuppam assembly seat in the next general elections