Andhra Pradesh By-polls 2012

The margin has come down in the lone assembly seat in Telangana. TRS leads by a few hundred votes over YSR Congress. Will Jagan manage to win this seat in Telangana?

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HYDERABAD   Jagan Mohan Reddy's party the YSR Congress would have had the confetti ready. As largely predicted, it is leading in 15 of the 18 assembly seats for which by-elections were held this week and the big celebrations have begun. Mr Reddy is said to be watching closely in jail, where he has been lodged for three weeks now on corruption charges.

Also watching the results closely is Kiran Kumar Reddy, the one Congress chief minister who has not rushed to Delhi on urgent summons from the party high command. He is in Hyderabad, reportedly analysing vote share and other political health parameters that emerge from these crucial by-election to 18 assembly and one Lok Sabha seat. His party which held 16 of these seats till December last year, is leading only in one. The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is expectedly leading in the one Telangana seat of Parkal and the main opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is ahead in one.

Jagan Reddy has accused both the Congress and the main opposition Telugu Desam Party of being afraid of the rise of a third force in the state. Indeed, if leads turn into results today, the dynamics of Andhra Pradesh politics would have changed. Assembly elections are due in the state in 2014.(Who is Jagan Mohan Reddy?)

In 16 of the 18 assembly seats that will be decided today, by-elections are being held because the sitting Congress MLAs were disqualified by the Assembly Speaker for switching loyalties to the YSR Congress and voting against the Congress government during a no-trust vote in December last year. Every seat that Jagan wins of these will be eat into the Congress' thin majority in the Andhra assembly. The Kiran Kumar Reddy-led government has 151 seats in the 294-member Assembly; the hallway mark is at 148.

But, it is not a collapse of government that the Congress fears as an outcome of today's results. At this point the TDP is also not mid-term election ready and is unlikely to try and topple the government. Jagan Reddy himself has said he does not expect the government to fall. Kiran Kumar Reddy's worst nightmare is the possibility of a mass exodus from his party into the Jagan camp. Jagan Reddy is the son of the very popular former chief minister YSR Reddy, who died in a chopper crash in 2009. Some of his die-hard loyalists switched camp when his son broke away from the Congress. Jagan claims many others are just waiting to cross over. The TDP too faces that threat.

The Congress's one big weapon against Jagan Reddy, and which it can be expected to put to aggressive use to try and puncture his spectacular win are the corruption charges against him. The CBI is investigating how Mr Reddy became on of the richest MPs in the country. There are  allegations that companies investing in his businesses in return for favours and benefits from the Congress government when YSR Reddy was chief minister.

Pollsters had predicted the Jagan walkover. The whopping 79.52 per cent votes cast on Tuesday made analysts wager that both the "anti-incumbency" and a "sympathy" factor would work for Jagan Reddy, who was plucked out of an intense campaign, questioned for three days by the CBI and then was arrested on May 27 and sent to Chanchalguda Jail in Hyderabad in a disproportionate assets case.     

This kept him away from the rest of the campaign, but his mother YS Vijaya and sister Sharmila took over and made a martyr of him, lambasting the ruling Congress for what they called unfair tactics. Jagan's camp is sensing victory already. In a first ever interview, his wife Bharati told NDTV, "Indications are that it will be a good day for us. Wish Jagan were here today. It is his day. He has worked so hard for it." (Exclusive: It's Jagan's day, says his wife)

The results will also been keenly watched in Delhi. In 2004, the Congress had won 29 seats in Andhra Pradesh out of its overall tally of 145 seats in the Lok Sabha. This tally increased to 33 - out of 207 - in the current Lok Sabha. Andhra Pradesh sends 42 members to the Lok Sabha, and these polls are being seen as a curtain-raiser to the 2014 elections.

The 294 member assembly also has a big impact of the upcoming Presidential polls, as it forms an important part of the electoral college. A big win for Jagan Mohan Reddy may compound the Congress' problems and make it more difficult to install a UPA-backed candidate in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

THE TELANGANA FACTOR

Of the 18 Assembly seats, eight are in Rayalaseema and nine in coastal Andhra Pradesh. Parkal is the only one seat going for by-poll in the Telangana region. Here, the YSR Congress candidate Konda Surekha had resigned as minister and MLA in support of Jagan Mohan Reddy. Though the Telangana sentiment is strong, the split of votes between the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), which many believe has an edge, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to give the YSR Congress an advantage.

Enthused by their win in Mahbubnagar in the recent by-polls, the BJP is also hoping to do a repeat in Parkal. Pollsters predict a three-cornered fight between the TRS, BJP and YSR Congress. The Congress and Telugu Desam (TDP) are expected to come in at four and five.

• YSR Cong: 14
• Congress: 2
• TRS :1

• Indications are it will be a good day for us.I wish Jagan were here today. It is his day. He has worked so hard for it.
• I will not be coming upfront in politics. I am sure he will come out very soon.
• Sometimes it is very scary. It is just us three women: my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and me. You never know. These things sometimes can take a long time. We are fighting against the system.