Hyderabad:
Jagan Mohan Reddy's immediate future was decided yesterday by a court which said he would stay in jail for two more weeks in a corruption case. Today, his political future will be decided with 18 Assembly constituencies and one Lok Sabha constituency voting in by-elections in Andhra Pradesh. 61 per cent voting was registered till 2 pm. By-elections are also being held to five other seats in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Tripura.
How the 4.6 million voters across these 18 Andhra seats vote will decide whether the 39-year-old YSR Congress chief is indeed the X-factor that could change the dynamics of politics in his state; most impacted will be the ruling Congress and the main Opposition Telugu Desam Party. Jagan Reddy's party believes it is ready to give the state a third formidable force and though Mr 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, his mother Vijayalakshmi and sister Sharmila put the Congress firmly on the backfoot with allegations of running scared and playing unfair.
(Special Feature: Jagan's journey to jail intersects political ambitions)The Congress has also sought to distance itself from the decisions taken by its vastly popular former Chief Minister YSR Reddy, Jagan Mohan's father, who died in a helicopter crash in 2009. The CBI is investigating allegations that YSR Reddy and some of his ministers handed benefits to companies that invested in Jagan Mohan Reddy's businesses. Some of those ministers are still members of the Congress cabinet and are being questioned in the case, much to the ruling party's discomfort. (Andhra Pradesh by-polls:
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In 16 of the 18 assembly seats that vote 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. If Jagan Reddy's party wins these seats it will have bitten a chunk out of the 156 seats that the Congress had won in 2009 in the 294-member Assembly.
In Rayachoti, 72-year-old Lakshmi gives voice to a popular sentiment in the region. A canny voter, she is out early to beat the heat and will not reveal who she just voted for. But she does 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 the YSR Congress.
Poll pundits say Jagan Reddy's arrest and his mother and sister making a martyr of him is likely to help the cause of the YSR Congress. Also, most of his 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.
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 is also underway in the by-elections to 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.
Polling will be held today from 8 am to 5 pm. Election authorities say elaborate arrangements have been made. In Andhra Pradesh - 50,000 polling personnel including 138 companies of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) have been deployed to ensure peaceful polling, State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Bhanwar Lal told reporters on Monday.