During the marathon talks between the Telugu Desam Party-Jana Sena combine and the Bharatiya Janata Party national leadership two days ago, an interesting development has come to the fore – that Jana Sena chief and actor Pawan Kalyan will contest the Lok Sabha elections, not the assembly elections.
The leak from New Delhi was that the suggestion was given by the BJP national leadership and that it has offered to take Pawan into the Narendra Modi cabinet, as his elder brother Chiranjeevi also had been to Delhi and become a Union minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet.
There were reports that Pawan Kalyan was convinced about the suggestion given by the BJP national leadership and is actively considering the proposal. Maybe, he is getting carried away by the lure of the cabinet minister post.
But Kapu leaders are suspecting that it could be a ploy of TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu that Pawan Kalyan should go to Lok Sabha. They are of the view that Naidu might have influenced the BJP national leaders to brainwash Pawan Kalyan in this regard.
Kapu leader and former MP Chegondi Harirama Jogaiah on Monday wrote a letter to Pawan Kalyan to drop the idea, if the latter has any, to contest the Lok Sabha elections.
“If you have to gain the experience of ruling the state and a share in power in the state, you should contest the assembly elections,” he suggested.
Jogaiah warned that if there was no strong Kapu representation in the state, it would lead to a complete domination of Kammas and Reddys in the state politics and there would be no role for the Kapus and other weaker sections.
“In the past, too, Chiranjeevi has faced this experience by merging his Praja Rajyam Party with the Congress. The Kapus were relegated to the backseat. If Pawan Kalyan has no representation in the state assembly, it will lead to a campaign that Jana Sena would be merged with the TDP for the sake of Nara Lokesh, sooner or later,” he warned.