Former minister Siddha Raghava Rao, who had been loyal to the Telugu Desam Party for several years, jumped into the YSR Congress party after the 2019 assembly elections in which Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy registered a thumping victory.
One of the main reasons is that the Jagan government tightened noose around Siddha and his family by cancelling the mining leases of their granite company. In order to protect their business interests, he defected to the YSRCP.
Now, in the ongoing elections, Siddha expected the YSRCP ticket to either him or his son Sudheer from Darsi, his native constituency. However, Jagan wanted him to move to Ongole Lok Sabha seat or some other constituency, for which he did not agree.
Siddha and his son decided to keep silent for the time being and did not want to have any kind of confrontation with the party. And Jagan gave the party ticket to Buchepalli Srinivas Reddy, related to former MLA Buchepalli Sivaprasad Reddy.
Subsequently, Siddha family got the offer for Darsi ticket from Telugu Desam Party leadership. In fact, Darsi seat was allotted to Jana Sena Party as part of seat sharing agreement. Later, during the negotiations, it was taken back by the TDP.
Though Siddha Raghava Rao was interested in returning to the TDP, his son wants to play safe as he doesn’t want to antagonise Jagan at this stage, because if the YSRCP returns to power, the family would have to face the same problems it had in 2019.
Meanwhile, having come to know that Siddha is likely to get the TDP ticket, Jagan reportedly called him to Tadepalli and held negotiations. He apparently promised to take care of Siddha family political and business interests.
At the same time, the TDP has set a deadline for Siddha to join the party and take the ticket as the party is running out of time. Darsi is one of the six seats kept pending selection of candidates. While Siddha’s followers are bringing pressure on him to join the TDP, he is not able to take any decision.
Meanwhile, the TDP began looking for an alternative candidate for Darsi seat. At least half a dozen names are in the reckoning for the seat, including Garikapati Venkat, Gottipati Lakshmi and Harshini Ravi Kumar, sources said.
