Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy keeps the rumour mill working overtime by getting a 40-minute audience with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He had met with Union Home Minister Amit Shah a fortnight ago.
But the occasion provides him an opportunity to do soul-searching over sharing of power with a coalition which is completely antithesis to the basic character of his own party. Here are a few reasons to suggest why aligning with the BJP-led NDA is suicidal for the Jaganmohan Reddy’s Yuvajana Sramika Rytu Congress Party (YSRCP) in his home state.
Hurting minorities
The YSRC swept the elections in 2019 by securing 22 Parliamentary seats and 151 Assembly seats mainly with the support of Muslim and Christian minorities and Dalits who make up a major chunk of electorate in Andhra Pradesh. To give a minority face to his government Jagan Reddy made a Muslim, Deputy Chief Minister in his cabinet and five other Muslim representatives MLAs and MLCs.
The YSRC has already gained an acronym as a proxy for the NDA government from outside by solidly backing a slew of bills to the detriment of Muslims such as Citizens Amendment Bill (CAB), abrogation of the Article 370 of the Constitution that delegated special status for Jammu and Kashmir, criminalization of triple talaq, to name a few. The Jagan’s party, if it shares power with the NDA, will further alienate itself from its core vote bank.
BJP is a weakling
Andhra Pradesh continues to remain home to bipolar politics since the founding of the Telugu Desam Party by movie mogul NT Rama Rao in the early 1980s. After the emergence of the YSRC in March, 2011 the state became a stronghold for regional parties with no space for the national parties that include the BJP and the Congress.
Hence, the BJP is more of a liability than an asset for the YSRC on Jagan’s home turf. The saffron party has got just 1 percent vote share in the state and Parliament elections in 2019 which was equal to the votes polled under NOTA. That the BJP is aiming to cut into the ruling party’s Hindu votes by pursuing divisive politics and emerge as a principal opposition in place of the TDP shall not slip out of Jagan’s mind.
SCS a weapon for Naidu
As the BJP top brass declared that issue of special category status for AP, a demand on which the TDP broke ties with the NDA in March, 2018, was a closed chapter. And, the saffron party paid a heavy price in the elections in the state by making a dismal performance regardless of the Modi wave that swept across the country. It is to remind Jagan Reddy that he won the elections by highlighting the failure of his predecessor Chandrababu Naidu to make special status a reality. If Jagan joins the government without getting the NDA to revisit its stand on the SCS, it will become a stick in the hands of Naidu to beat Jagan with.
Is YSR legacy under threat?
The certain policy decisions of the NDA government like the Electricity (Amendment) Act, 2020 and farm laws recently enacted in the Parliament bring under question the welfare of farmers which was at the top of the agenda of his father Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy.
The Electricity (Amendment) Act seeks to take away the subject of power from the realms of states and ensure audit of power consumption by different segments of consumers. Therefore, freedom enjoyed by states like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana where the farmers are in distress to offer free power for agriculture is also robbed by the Centre through the act. The farm laws seek to eliminate the role of government agencies such as the Food Corporation of India from the business of procurement of food grains. The laws thereby may further push the peasants into distressed conditions. Andhra Pradesh by producing 1.80crore tons of food grains annually is the third largest state in the country next to Punjab and Haryana.