Opinion: "Jagan must rebuild party, lie low with strategic silence"

Amaravati: Following the humiliating defeat in the recent Andhra Pradesh polls, YSRCP chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy may lie low for a year at least, and rebuilding the party should be his priority, political observers in the state opine.

Considering the mere 11 Assembly seats YSRCP won, V Anji Reddy, a political analyst, noted that Jagan Mohan Reddy may not even get the Leader of Opposition status in the Legislative Assembly, compelling the party from taking an aggressive posture right away.

The NDA alliance of TDP, BJP and Janasena routed YSRCP, winning a brute majority of 164 Assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats in the just concluded 2024 polls. YSRCP won just four Lok Sabha seats.

"He (Jagan) has to build the party again. There is no party organisation. YSRCP has no structure at the grassroots level. The party doesn't even have a higher level. Have you ever seen the party having a political executive? Has it ever met? Does the party have any organisational structure at the district, mandal and village levels,"Anji Reddy told PTI.

Pointing out that Jagan Mohan Reddy had made himself inaccessible to his own MLAs over the past five years, Anji Reddy termed this area as an utter failure, which worked to his detriment and angered the MLAs.

On Wednesday, YSRCP leader J Raja, who lost his Rajanagaram Assembly seat to Janasena’s B Balaramakrishna with a margin of 34,049 votes held some officials and party leaders of Jagan Mohan Reddy’s CMO responsible for the disconnect.

"Officials like Dhananjaya Reddy did not sanction bills for MGNREGS works...They have affected the party directly and indirectly. Some officials and coterie drew a boundary around the CM (Jagan) and kept him in a trance. If any document was given to the CM, he used to believe and entrust it with them," claimed Raja, addressing a press conference.

This impression of CM being inaccessible to MLAs has also permeated to the village level, compelling the legislators to openly admit their predicament and thereby depriving Jagan Mohan Reddy from understanding the pulse of the people, said Anji Reddy.

Further, he highlighted that the YSRCP chief’s unsuspecting complete reliance on his own image and personality as a rallying point for people to vote for his government was another major folly.

"So, he (Jagan) thought that without the MLAs and without other political leadership people will vote in favour of YSRCP on the basis of his image itself. That is the kind of arrogance he had. MLAs were immaterial," Anji Reddy noted.

It was also pointed out by a couple of YSRCP leaders that the human touch-lacking direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes, and also the volunteer system had wreaked havoc with the party's reach out to the masses.

Though Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy should have acted as a political bridge between the CM and MLAs in the capacity of advisor (public affairs) to the government, Anji Reddy claimed that it is not clear as to what role he had actually played.

Underscoring the key role of a political party being a channel of communication between the government and people in a democracy, he observed that a proper party structure in the next six months could 'reinvigorate' YSRCP.

However, Anji Reddy noted that the YSRCP founder must respect people's verdict and give sufficient time to the prospective chief minister to settle down and fix his 'priorities', and respond when TDP's N Chandrababu Naidu "fails to deliver on his promises".

On keenly observing the YSRCP chief's personality over the past 15 years, he identified Jagan Mohan Reddy as a "fighter who will not bow down."

In spite of the colossal electoral loss at the hustings, YSRCP managed to garner up to 40 percent vote share to TDP's 46 percent, and "continues to enjoy enormous trust", said Anji Reddy.

Reacting to the election results, a flummoxed Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday said he didn't imagine that the results would come in such fashion but vowed that the YSRCP will act as the 'voice for the voiceless'.

Meanwhile, Telakapalli Ravi, another political analyst, said Jagan Mohan Reddy must introspect as to where things went wrong and stop alluding to cheating in the polls.

"Jagan’s speech yesterday alluded to some kind of cheating. Their papers (newspaper) also mentioned that there was cheating with regards to the EVMs. Talking like this instead of political introspection and self-criticism is of no use," said Ravi.

Ruling out YSRCP’s disappearance theory, Ravi reminded that it had also made such prophecies on TDP but those predictions were proved wrong.

Most importantly, he observed, the YSRCP enjoys 11 Rajya Sabha members and four Lok Sabha MPs now, proving him to be of vital importance to Prime Minister Narendra Modi whereas the TDP doesn’t have even a single Rajya Sabha member presently.

Inputs from PTI