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Modi touch draws Telugu states to Kovind

NewsModi touch draws Telugu states to Kovind

It is the personal charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that guaranteed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) around 92% of votes in the Electoral College from the two Telugu states in the 17 July Presidential elections. Thanks to the backing of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) and YSR Congress president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, Ram Nath Kovind will now sweep the polls in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Kovind will get around 76,542 valued votes from both the states put together, while opposition candidate Meira Kumar will get just 7,020 valued votes, around 8% of the electorate. Thanks to the deft outreach by the BJP top brass, both TRS and YSR Congress, that are not partners of the ruling NDA, have joined ranks with the BJP, leaving the opposition camp in a tiny minority. The Congress high command never reached out to either the TRS or YSR Congress in the last three years, thus losing two major parties to the BJP.

It is interesting to note that neither TRS nor YSR Congress is likely to contest in alliance with the BJP in the next general elections. AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP is a bitter rival to both KCR and Jagan. Jagan is fighting Naidu to come to power in AP, while KCR is attacking both TDP and BJP in Telangana. Still both KCR and Jagan view PM Modi as their friend at the Centre. This has become possible due to the personal equations both KCR and Jagan had developed with the PM over the last two years. 

KCR never misses an opportunity to side with PM Modi on almost all major policy initiatives, be it demonetisation or GST, while Jagan is impressed with the PM granting him an appointment last month to complain against CM Naidu. Moreover, the PM and the BJP top brass had deftly acted on the issue of selecting the candidate for the presidential election. Even before the name of Kovind was made public, the PM himself called up KCR, while BJP president Amit Shah called up Jagan to seek their support. Otherwise, the BJP would have had to do with the support of just TDP, which is in power in AP.  There is a fierce political fight between the TDP and YSR Congress in AP and in normal circumstances, it would have been impossible for Jagan to back a BJP candidate, who is also backed by TDP. But careful moves by the BJP leadership have encouraged Jagan to come on their side. Jagan, too, backed the PM on demonetisation and GST. Jagan called on PM Modi almost a month before the announcement of the BJP’s presidential candidate and announced that he would be with the ruling coalition and even appealed to the Congress to drop its plans to put up a fight. Jagan presently commands 47 MLAs and eight MPs with a total vote value of around 12,000.

This is in addition to TDP’s vote value of 36,000, which includes 121 MLAs and 18 Lok Sabha and five Rajya Sabha members from AP. Except two Congress Rajya Sabha members, all the MPs—25 from the Lok Sabha and nine from TDP—and 174 MLAs will vote for Kovind. The vote value of an MP is 708, while the MLA vote is valued at 159 in AP and 132 in Telangana.  

KCR, too, promised his party’s support to Kovind when PM Modi called him on Monday afternoon. 

Minutes after the PM’s call, the CM’s office released a statement saying that the PM had reminded him that it was KCR’s suggestion to field a Dalit candidate in the presidential election. KCR was present at the time of Kovind filing his nomination. In addition to 90 MLAs and 15 Lok Sabha MPs and three Rajya Sabha MPs of TRS, the BJP presidential nominee will get the votes of three TDP MLAs and five BJP MLAs in Telangana.

That leaves only 13 Congress, seven MIM and one CPM MLAs which will go to the opposition candidate. In Telangana, Kovind is expected to bag around 23,556 value votes, as against 5,604 of Meira Kumar.

In AP, Kovind will sweep with the votes of 174 MLAs, 25 Lok Sabha and nine RS MPs, a total value of 51,738. “Had Congress handled the selection of candidate efficiently, the choice of Meira Kumar would have been difficult to ignore to TRS as it was she who presided over the LS when the Telangana Bill was passed in the House,” said a Congress former minister from Hyderabad on the condition of anonymity.

However, both TRS and YSR Congress are not in a hurry to join the NDA anytime soon. Jagan is learnt to have indicated to the PM that he was interested in contesting the next polls in alliance with the BJP in AP, though a decision on this will take more time.

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