Andhra Politics - Congress ;TDP;PRP;TRS

This is the current political scenario in the state

TDP + CPM + CPI

TRS - mostly towards TDP

PRP : Alone

Congress: Alone

Lok Satta: Alone

Lok Satta has made a statement yesterday that they are open to a coalition with any political party which is willing to work with them in the next elections. Lok Satta is a party built on high ideologies and is not a strong party from the view of Vote Bank. So, none of the parties is actually interested in coalating with this party.

However, Jaya Prakash, as a formality announced that they are open to coalitions with any party and laid some conditions. He said that any party willing to work with them should not distribute money or liquor to people at election time and also should not include any ‘free’ offers in the manifesto which are practically not possible.

It is clear that no major political party will dare to abide by these conditions given the current state of politics in the country. In the previous elections also, Lok Satta made a similar proposal to the political parties and none of the parties showed any interest in coalating with Lok Satta. Even now, none of the parties are willing to abide by these conditions and work with Lok Satta.

So, Lok Satta will have to contest alone in the next elections and may not even win a single seat. However, winning in the elections is not the ultimate aim of Lok Satta, at least in these elections.

The results came as no surprise when Jaya Prakash Narayana was elected as the President of Lok Satta party. Lok Satta which had been a voluntary organization for more than a decade has recently registered itself as a political party and decided to contest in the elections. Though JP continued as the president of the party as long as the party was just a social organization, he had to contest with others for the same post after Lok Satta turned into a political party.

The elections for the post were conducted all over the state a few days back in which close to 1 lakh Lok Satta members participated to elect their party president. The counting has begun yesterday and of the 60K votes counted, JP showed a clear majority. Till now, Jaya Prakash secured 57K votes while the other contestants, DVVS Varma and Aakula Maharani got 4000 and 2500 votes respectively. So, even as the counting continues, it is clear that JP is elected the next President of Lok Satta.

 This election is seen by some as a political gimmick to convey the democracy in their party against other parties like TDP and PRP where there are no elections to choose the president of the party. Everyone knew that JP will win, but still they conducted these elections, just as a formality!

Who is the president of TDP - Chandra Babu

 Who is the president of Congress - YSR

Who is the president of PRP - Chiranjeevi

These are pretty obvious and taken for granted. Though all the above parties claim to be democratic, no one would contest against them for the President. Worse, these posts sometimes go hereditary without any contest.

But the situation in LokSatta is different. Lok Satta founded by Jaya Prakasha Narayanan was being led by JayPrakasha all these years.  However, this time two other members are contesting for the President of this party. This party is going for internal elections in the next elections and it was reported that two other members other than Dr. Jayaprakash had purchased the applications(names not revealed).This party has more than five lakh members who are eleigible to vote and choose their leadership.

There were a few comments that Lok Satta is doing this deliberately to ’show off’ that their party is more open and democratic that the other parties. It is obvious that JayaPrakash will win this and the contest is just a political gimmick, said an opposition party leader.

Finally the nightmare has ended. Indian Army has completely sanitized the four locations that were attacked by terrorists on the 26th of November. Now that the situation is under control Indian Government and all the states have gone into retrospection. As it is done after every terror attack, discussions are on as to what steps need to be taken to contain terrorism.

The Government of Andhra Pradesh has convened a meeting with the Home ministry and the police officials of the state yesterday. Hyderabad, the capital city of the state is a very likely target for a terror attack and has already suffered a couple of terror attacks. In wake of the Mumbai attacks, the government has decided to raise its own security force in the lines of the National Security Guards at the central level.

NSGs’ have played a key role in containing the Mumbai attacks. The new force being setup in the state will be called State Security Guards (SSG) and will follow the same high benchmarks in selection and training as the NSGs’. The Mumbai attackers reached the country from the coastline. As Andhra also has a long coast line the Government has decided to tighten the security along the coast line.

All the parties in the state realized the importance of being united at this critical stage and supported the steps being taken by the Government to contain terrorism.

As the Americans started giving Thanks to each other, India suffered one of the biggest terrorist attacks in its history. The Taj and Oberoi luxury hotels in the heart of the city of Mumbai were seized by a group of terrorists who captured hundreds of people in the hotels as hostages. Apart from these hotels there were bomb blasts in nine other places in Mumbai, all at a time.

Mumbai is the financial capital of India and thus had been the target of terrorist attacks for many years for now. Terrorists whose only aim is to destabilize the country and make it infamous internationally had chose to kill the unarmed civilians to reach their target. I never understand how they would justify this act of killing innocent people without any kind of provocation and the terrorists do all of this in the name of their god!

The unity exhibited by all the political parties of the country in condemning this act is worth mentioning. None of the parties blamed each other for the security breaches but realized they should remain united to fight terrorism. All the political parties from the state condemned these attacks ans took an oath to do anything that can contain terrorism.

 I hope that god blesses the terrorists with some common sense. If they are not pleased with the system in India and wanted to revolt, they are welcome to fight with the Indian Army, but not the civilians. India has lost three Police officers and one Army commando as of now. May souls of these heroes, who lost their lives to save the country, rest in peace.

I know this is not a blog on American politics. But then elections in the world’s super power is every body’s concern and thus this post. As expected, Mr.Obama has won the elections and will be the 44th president of United States. He is the first African American president in US.

Though Americans wanted him as a president, this is not in the best interests of India. Obama has been insisting that  he would not allow outsourcing of jobs to eastern countries and if this policy comes into effect, the country that will be hit hardest is India, which is largely dependent on the IT sector and the jobs outsourced from US. This would leave millions of people in India jobless. Let us see how the Indian Government would handle this.

I expect that the US based companies would establish themselves in India, if Obama does not allow outsourcing. After all they cannot get cheap labour obtained in India in US. If this happens, Obama would have indirectly helped India :) 

 Coming backto Andhra politics, TDPs’ Yuvagarjana was a huge success. Close to 20 lakh people attended this meeting which is way beyond the expectations of the party leaders. TDP is over joyed seeing this huge voluntary response. If they can continue this image in public for the next few months, they hope they will get into the ruling side again. 

Former TDP leader and President of Nava Telangana Party, Mr. Gaud had ‘declared’ separate Telangana state yesterday. He said that their party and the people of the Telengana state and fed up with the complacence of the state and central governments and thus have declared their own state. According to Gaud, people of Telangana have waited for years together to get their problem solved and have now lost their patience.

After this ‘declaration’ Mr. Gaud along with his followers tried to enter the State secretariat and change all the boards that read as ‘Andhra Pradesh’ to ‘Telengana’. The mob being led by Gaud staged a ‘dharna’ and burnt an effigy of the chief minister and blocked the traffic for a long time. Finally the police had to enter the scene and arrest all the followers along with Gaud to close this drama.

Mr. Gaud quit TDP in which he served for 20 years just for a political advantage in the Telangana region. But TDP’s steps over the last few months to contain Mr. Gaud were successful and now he found himself in a fix and trying to sustain his existence in the state’s political scenario. As a result we see ‘useless movements’ like separate state declaration which are of no use and only serve to test the patience of the public.

To be out

Former TDP leader Mr. Devender Gaud, yesterday left to Delhi to talk to the central leaders about his newly formed party NTP and to seek support for his cause. He has met Advani, leader of BJP and discussed with him the possibility of giving Telengana if BJP comes to power at the centre next year. It is reported that Advani spoke in favour of Telengana and said that it is only because of TDP’s policy against Telengana that they couldn’t give a seperate state in their previous term. Now that TDP also has changed its policy favoring a seperate state, there wouldn’t be any problem, Adavni said.

Mr. Gaud who left his mother party TDP to fight for the cause of Telengana and formed his own party Nava Telengana Praja Party earlier this year, is now in a fix as TDP has chosen to fight for Telengana. Given that all the major parties in the state have decided to support Telengana (their actual intentions might be different), NTP is now trying to maintain its existence and thus these trips to Delhi. Mr. Gaud who traited his mother party (as some people feel) has got what he deserves.

Just for those who are not aware, Mr.Gaud’s Nava Telengana Praja Party has been renamed as Nava Telengana Party as the former name was already registered.