YSR Congress party president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy seems to have decided to pay his arch rival Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu in his own coin in the ensuing MLC elections.
The YSR Congress party has at present 46 MLAs in the assembly, after the defection of 21 MLAs into the ruling party in the last two years. With this number, it can comfortably win two MLC seats under MLAs’ quota, as it requires 23 MLAs to elect each MLC.
However, the TDP leaders have started spreading rumours that some more YSR Congress party MLAs are going to join the TDP soon and hence, the Jagan party would not be able to win more than one seat. This has apparently angered Jagan.
Sources said he has decided to give a shock to Naidu by fielding not just two candidates, but a third candidate as well in the MLCs polls.
This is apparently plant the seeds of suspicion among the TDP leadership that some of the YSRC MLAs who had defected to the TDP would vote for the third YSRC candidate in the MLC elections, since they are repenting for joining the TDP. Moreover, some disgruntled TDP MLAs also would support him.
The YSRC leadership has already spreading this talk in the political circles so as to demoralise the TDP leaders.
It may be recalled that Naidu tried this trick in the Rajya Sabha elections last year by fielding a fourth candidate so as to defeat YSR Congress party candidate V Vijay Sai Reddy, but since he could not muster enough numbers, he withdrew the fourth candidate.
But this time, Jagan is bent upon teaching a lesson to Naidu by fielding a third candidate for the MLC elections to test the strength and also expose the defectors by invoking anti-defection law!
