YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, doesn’t mince words when he interacts with his party leaders. Unlike his Telugu Desam Party counterpart, N Chandrababu Naidu, who tries to be diplomatic while dealing with his party leaders, Jagan calls a spade a spade and is rather blunt in expressing his opinion while talking to his party MLAs.
For the last few party meetings, Jagan has been openly expressing his opinions on the performance of the party MLAs and giving them rankings.
If the feedback on any MLA is bad, he has been openly telling them. Now that the elections are fast approaching, Jagan has been indicating rather openly who would get the party tickets and who would not.
If the performance of any MLA is far from satisfactory, Jagan is telling him that he won’t get the party ticket in the next elections.
According to party sources, the chief minister reportedly told at least 20-25 MLAs that they won’t be getting the party tickets again. In conveying this message, Jagan has been a little blunt, instead of adopting a convincing approach.
“This strategy appears to be backfiring. If the boss tells an MLA that his performance is poor and that he won’t get the ticket again, who will focus on the party work and the constituency?” a party leader said.
According to him, such MLAs would take it easy with the party and focus only on making as much money as possible through various methods.
“That will ultimately reflect on the party and Jagan, not the MLA, who will anyway not contest the elections again,” he said.
Some of them would be looking towards the rival TDP and would resort to sabotaging the YSRC.
“Jagan should not give such a chance to the MLAs. He should not tell them bluntly on their faces that they won’t get tickets. He should convince them about his inability to give the tickets because of certain equations, and they would be suitably rewarded for their cooperation after the party comes to power again,” the YSRC leader said.
