All is not well in Jagan’s camp. That is the general feeling among watchers of YSR Congress chief’s padayatra in Andhra Pradesh. His record-breaking 3,000km-long walkathon attempt, he began on November 5 to garner public support for his bid to become chief minister in 2019, appears to be an exercise in futility.
Reasons are many. By the time he completes his epic walk –given the delays caused by court appearances and health conditions — elections will be still a year away. Poll history and trends anywhere in the world show that the last-minute campaign will have an effective impact on voters. If that is the case, Jaganmohan Reddy has to put in as much, or more, effort as he is now to pull off a victory for his party to form a government. What it boils down to is he should not end up as a spent force before the final campaign.
But his poll strategists, led by Prashant Kishor (PK as he is popularly known) seem to have a different take. Jagan’s meet-the-people yatra is primarily aimed at interacting with rural people to understand their problems. Between the lines, what it means is, “I will resolve all your problems if you give me power.”
But in his hurry to replace the Telugu Desam Party and its supremo Nara Chandrababu Naidu, Jagan makes it so explicit that his one and the only agenda is to become the AP chief minister. Despite his PR exercise with Telugu and national media, he is not getting enough coverage except in his newspaper and TV channel Sakshi. In fact, he is running a padayatra diary in his daily detailing his progress laced with accusations against Congress and TDP. When the cases are in courts, is it prudent to exonerate himself from culpability?
Moreover, his much-publicised padayatra itself is under scanner in the social media. According to a WhatsApp message making the rounds, it costs Rs 2 crores a day and the expected total cost of his 200-day journey is Rs 500 crores! It doesn’t include the cost of PK poll strategy team that accompanies Jagan wherever he goes.
It is said that Jagan is a mere actor following the PK’s script (nothing to do with Aamir Khan’s film!) that has all the necessary ingredients to make him sit in CM’s chair in Amaravati in 2019. If insiders are to be believed, PK is the new power centre and the new reality has cheesed off YSR Congress party loyalists and Jagan’s confidants.
In a way, the party and its leadership is struggling to balance the exigencies of winning the 2019 poll battle with out-of-box ideas and the traditional methods followed by the late YS Rajasekhar Reddy.
To make his dream a reality, Jagan has to first establish his credentials as an effective alternative to Chandrababu. Despite mass attendance at his meetings, people are yet to be convinced about Jagan’s capabilities because he hasn’t gone beyond CM bashing and invoking his father’s legacy. Boycotting the current AP Assembly session on flimsy grounds proves this point.
