Nobody in the YSR Congress party can read the mind of party president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy in drafting the party strategy to win the elections; including his own close associates like Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy.
He seems to banking on the leaders from Rayalaseema to conquer the coastal Andhra districts, particularly Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Godavari districts, for the reasons known only to him.
For example, Jagan has entrusted the task of consolidating the party and winning the seats in north-coastal Andhra, particularly Visakhapantam, to his uncle and senior leader Y V Subba Reddy, the chairman of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams.
This is learnt to have upset seniors like Dharmana Prasada Rao and Botsa Satyanarayana, though they have been loyal to the party.
Similarly, the task of coordinating the party leaders and chalk out strategies in East and West Godavari districts has been entrusted to Rajampet MP P Mithun Reddy, who has been made the regional coordinator of the party for these districts.
For the last two days, Mithun Reddy has been holding talks with the MLAs and other key leaders of Kakinada and Konaseema districts to work out counter strategies to neutralise the impact of Jana Sena, whose president Pawan Kalyan took out Vaarahi Vijaya Yatra in the erstwhile East Godavari district.
It was rather surprising for the local YSRCP leaders, as Mithun Reddy has least understand of the political dynamics in the Godavari districts. They brought to the notice of Reddy that the Kapu votes are directly tilting towards Pawan and it required a lot of ground work to regain their support.
Mithun held talks with Kapu patriarch Mudragada Padmanabham and wooed him into the party to win back the confidence of Kapus. He wanted the leaders to intensify the door-to-door campaign and also effectively counter the criticism of the JSP and the TDP.
The party leaders were also asked to put an end to the differences among themselves and gear up for next elections.
The party leadership is said to have indicated that allotment of the YSRC ticket to the sitting MLAs is largely dependent on their popularity graph in the surveys. Hence, they were asked to focus on taking the welfare schemes of the YSRC government to the people.