For example, Uttar Pradesh, which recorded the year’s biggest electoral surprise when the Samajwadi Party ousted Mayawati’s BSP, saw 59.5 per cent voting in Assembly elections held earlier this year; that was UP’s record voter turnout in many years. The entire Andhra Pradesh saw a 72.6% voter turnout in 2009.
In 16 of the 18 assembly seats that voted today, by-elections have been held because the sitting Congress MLAs were disqualified by the Assembly Speaker for switching loyalty to Mr Reddy’s YSR Congress and voting against the Congress government during a no-trust vote in December last year. If Jagan Reddy’s party wins these seats it will have bitten a neat chunk out of the 156 seats that the Congress had won in 2009 in the 294-member Assembly.
It will also prove that the 39-year-old Kadapa MP is indeed the X-factor that could change the dynamics of politics in Andhra Pradesh; the ruling Congress and the main Opposition Telugu Desam Party will be affected most. Jagan Reddy’s party believes it is ready to give the state a formidable third force. Jagan Reddy was plucked out of an intense campaign by the CBI, which first interrogated him for three days and then arrested him on May 27 in a disproportionate assets case.
Mr Reddy has been in jail since. He was told yesterday that he would spend two more weeks there. His mother Vijayalakshmi and sister Sharmila played the sympathy card to the hilt, making a martyr out of Mr Reddy and accusing the ruling Congress of playing unfair.
Poll pundits say those factors are likely to help the cause of the YSR Congress. Also, most of the party’s candidates are the ex-Congressman who had won these seats and then switched loyalties when Jagan Mohan Reddy left the Congress. Jagan Reddy has also said that he expects more leaders from the Congress and even from the TDP to join him in the coming months.
In Rayachoti, a canny voter, 72-year-old Lakshmi, was out early to beat the heat and would not reveal who she just voted for. But she did say, “If the hand tries to stop a running fan then it will get cut.” The hand is the Congress’ election symbol; the fan is the symbol of Jagan Reddy’s YSR Congress.
One indicator of how important these by-elections are is the unaccounted cash and liquor seized ahead of voting – over Rs. 42 crore in cash and valuable items like gold and silver worth Rs. 12 crore were seized; this is more than that seized in the entire high-stakes Uttar Pradesh assembly elections earlier this year. And more than the entire amount seized when Andhra Pradesh voted for 294 assembly and 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2009.
Voting was also held for by-elections to the Lok Sabha seat of Nellore in Andhra Pradesh and for Nalchar Assembly constituency in Sipahijala district of Tripura, Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu, Kej assembly constituency in Beed district of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh’s Mant legislative assembly constituency and in Hatia in Jharkhand.
