Recovering from the shock of a devastating defeat in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly Elections, YSR Congress Party (YSRCP)‘s President Y S Jagan Reddy began a postmortem on what led to his party’s debacle.
While no one expected a smooth sailing for Reddy and his party in the elections, the total rout of the party with securing only 11 seats out of 175 came as a ‘surprise’ to the former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh who had managed to win 151 out of 175 seats in 2019 elections which dislodged the then ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) from power.
Reddy had long-discussions with the senior leaders, winners and losers of his party at his residence at Tadepalli to find out why a huge welfare disbursal to the tune of ₹4.49-lakh crore during 2019-2024 did not bring him back to power.
In a frank talk which was unusual earlier among the party the leaders, according to reliable sources, told their leaders that the volunteers on whom the government and party depended to come back to power had actually dominated other local institutions such as village panchayats and led to resentment among the party cadre at the grassroots level.
Party’s high-handedness
The ‘high-handedness’ of some officials in the CMO of Reddy was also blamed for keeping ‘an iron curtain’ between Reddy and his party MLAs, who could not even meet him to convey the local issues and challenges of the party.
The damage done by an overdose of personal criticism with unparliamentary language by some leaders/ministers including Kodali Nani, actress-politician Roja and Ambati Rambabu on TDP Chief N Chandrababu Naidu and Jana Sena Chief Pawan Kalyan also back fired, felt some leaders.
While admitting that the loss was ‘immense and unprecedented’, Reddy assured his partymen that the party would ‘strike back’ in the 2029 elections.
Jagan Reddy is also back on social media platform X alleging ‘atrocities’ against YSRCP activists and a ‘decline’ in law and order situation in the State.