For quite some time, both Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu and his bête noire YSR Congress party president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy have been indicating to the media that they would announce the candidates for the ensuing assembly and Lok Sabha elections well in advance.
Both Naidu and Jagan apparently sought to follow Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao who announced the list of 105 candidates three months before the conduct of the assembly elections.
This has given the TRS candidates a lot of time to go into the people, pool their monetary resources and take up the election campaign well ahead of the opposition parties which could not finalise their candidates even three weeks before the elections, thereby lagging much behind the ruling party in the election campaign. Result: TRS won the elections hands down.
Though Naidu and Jagan made a similar announcements in the recent past, they are now said to be in a dilemma to release their list of candidates and they are likely to take more time.
According to TDP sources, Naidu, though has kept his list of candidates ready, is hesitating to announce the same because it would definitely trigger large scale exodus of leaders into the YSR Congress party. He does not want a disturbed situation in the party.
Instead, he wants to rope in as many leaders as possible from the rival party so as to destabilize it first before coming out with his own strategy.
He also wants to wait till Jagan announces the list so that disgruntled leaders can come into the TDP.
On the other hand, Jagan is not able to release the list of candidates immediately, as they are facing the funds crunch.
If the names are announced, they have to start spending money from now on and by the time the polling day approaches, they would become penniless and that would give an edge to the TDP to woo the voters with money power.
In all probability, both the parties are unlikely to release the list of candidates till the election notification is issued!
