Till a few weeks ago, one Dr. Shanta Rao showed lot of interest to contest on the BJP ticket in Palasa assembly segment in Srikakulam district. The district party unit conveyed the same to the party state leadership. But now things took a dramatic turn as Dr. Shanta Rao is no longer interested in this. The reasons are obvious. He found out in his personal surveys that there would be no chance to get bare minimum votes, leave alone deposits.

With this, the BJP leaders are left in a state of shock. They don’t know that their party’s image has taken such a severe beating among AP people. The situation is no better in most assembly segments in the state. Even the Lok Sabha constituencies are also giving a tough time. In the absence of strong aspirants, the BJP state leaders are not able to begin the ticket allotment exercise till now. Worse still, things are getting worse with each passing day.

There is a feeling within the BJP that their campaign style has not yielded any good results so far. The AP people are not believing their leaders’ arguments that the Modi government has fulfilled majority promises of reorganisation. It is also too late for the BJP to change its strategy and renew their attack on rivals.