The curtains fell on an election campaign on April 17 for the seat of Tirupati Lok Sabha on Thursday evening.
SPSR Nellore District Collector and Returning Officer KVN Chakradhar Babu informed a media conference here that all precautions have been taken to ensure a fair and free voting in the 2,470 polling stations that are fully compliant with the COVID-19 protocol and enforce prohibition instructions according to Cr. Pc.144.
23 companies of the central armed forces and three of the APSP employees would be put into service in the constituency, which includes the assembly segments Sarvepalli, Gudur, Sulurpeta and Venkatagiri in the Nellore district and Satyaveedu, Srikalahasti and Tirupati in the Chittoor district, the collector said together with superintendent of the Bhaskar Bhushan Police.
Although there are 28 candidates in the fight, the competition will mainly be among the nominees from the YSR Congress Party, Telugu Desam Party, Jana Sena Party-backed Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Prime Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy was sure of a victory margin of more than five lakh in by-poll and skipped the personal campaign for party candidate Dr. M. Gurumoorthy, a political freshman who relied heavily on the welfare systems of Jaganannas Navaratnalu. The ruling party projected the by-poll as a referendum on the party’s biennial rule, as it had implemented 90% of the election promises made by the party poll and Tirumala Tirupati disasthanam chairman YV Subba Reddy.
Naidu leads campaign
On the other hand, Telugu Desam party leader N. Chandrababu personally led the campaign for the party candidate, former Union Minister Panabaka Lakshmi, capitalizing on the injustice that the ruling Bharatiya Janata party at the center and the YSRCP after the fork committed against the state had fulfilled the election promise to secure the special category status for the state with vigor.
The BJP and YSRCP had competed with each other to collect high doses of taxes and made people’s lives miserable, she stressed during her campaign.
Another former union minister and congressional candidate, Dr. Chinta Mohan, dug a lonely furrow, trying to impress voters by stressing that the Congress party alone could represent an alternative to the BJP at the national level and not the two regional parties – the YSRCP and the TDP.
The BJP candidate K. Ratna Prabha, who was elected Union Minister and who exposed the “gloomy performance” of the YSRCP MPs in parliament, tried to get a positive vote for the development of the state in general and the constituency in particular liberal central funds.
Meanwhile, CPI (M) candidate Nellore Yadagiri impressed voters that the Marxist party alone could stop the BJP’s advance in the state from the Temple City, as the YSRCP and TDP support the BJP’s “sectarian” agenda in parliament had on several occasions.