Visakhapatnam: AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu lost big, but he can take comfort in the fact that the BJP did not even open its account in AP even as the rest of India came under the Modi juggernaut.
The BJP which went into the elections without the support of any other party in the state, but with two sitting MPs and is now again back to zero. Ironically, it was the alliance with the TD in 2014, that helped it win 2 Lok Sabha seats and 4 Assembly seats.
This time, it was not even in the fight, as the battle was between the YSRC and Telugu Desam and with Jana Sena at some places.
Kambhampati Hari-babu and Gokaraju Ganga Raju who were the two sitting BJP MPs from Vizag and Narsapuram respectively did not even contest in this election and they were replaced by Daggubati Purandeswari and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao. Ms Purandeswari had lost in the 2014 General Elections from Rajampet against the YSRC candidate Mithun Reddy and this time she did not get even 30,000 votes.
Mr Manikyala Rao who won from Tedepalli-gudem in 2014 contested from Narsapuram Lok Sabha constituency and only managed to get around 12,000 votes.
Meanwhile, Akula Satyanarayana who won from Rajamundry Asse-mbly segment in 2014 was now contesting on a Jana Sena ticket from Rajah-mundry Lok Sabha seat. The party replaced him with P Satya Gopinath Das, but he did not manage to get even 12,000 votes.
The BJP MLA from Visakhapatnam North assembly constituency, Mr P Vishnu Kumar Raju contested from the same constituency against Minister Ganta Srinivas Rao. He got only around 16,000 votes in these elections. So it can be said that with no strong supporting local political party, the BJP was wiped out from Andhra Pradesh.
Speaking to media persons BJP leader Daggubati Purandeswari, said, “We were with alliances till now. This is the first time we went alone. By the next elections, the party will get strengthened from the grass root level.
