Chandrababu Naidu’s only son Nara Lokesh is most likely to have a cake walk in Mangalagiri assembly constituency in Guntur district the May 13 assembly elections, surveys indicated.
According to various surveys, one might not be surprised if Lokesh gets a 60% vote share in the Mangalagiri elections, as YSRCP candidate Murugudu Lavanya has dropped the gun much before the battle has begun.
Sources said Lavanya could not get the expected support from local YSRCP leaders, including sitting MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy and YSRCP ticket aspirant Ganji Chiranjeevi.
Right from the beginning, the YSRCP leadership seems to have bungled in the selection of the right candidate for Mangalagiri and created a confusion of sorts among the party cadre.
After sidelining Alla Ramakrishna Reddy on the pretext that the internal surveys are against him, the party leadership brought in Ganji Chiranjeevi from the TDP and appointed him as the party in-charge, apparently to woo the weaving community.
“Later, the party considered the name of Kandru Kamala, an ex-MLA. Finally, it zeroed in on her daughter Murugudu Lavanya, who is also daughter-in-law of former MLA Murugudu Hanumantha Rao. This created some confusion in the cadre,” sources said.
But, the efforts of Lokesh in staging a comeback after his defeat in 2019 elections, also cannot be denied. Even after the loss, he did not lose in touch with Mangalagiri but he continued to nurture the constituency by regularly reaching out to the people.
In the last few weeks, Lokesh touched every section of the society, held meetings with colony associations, youth associations, weavers’ communities and women organizations to win over them.
At the same time, his wife Nara Brahmani, too, has been continuously touring the constituency and addressing meetings with various sections of people. That fetched him a good mileage for Lokesh, sources added.
The loss of the Amaravati capital city under the ruling YSRCP has dealt a major blow to not just the prospects of the weavers and handlooms business but also all other small businessmen, traders, vendors, hawkers and others.
The capital city works during the TDP regime brought with it an influx of multitudes of people, who had come to construct Amaravati and also buy local wares, bolstering their businesses.
“This also gave Lokesh a plus point in the elections,” an analyst said.