It is more or less confirmed that YSR Congress party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s sister and Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president Y S Sharmila is going to contest the May 13 Lok Sabha elections from Kadapa parliamentary constituency.
After meeting Congress top leader Rahul Gandhi at Mumbai on Sunday, Sharmila is learnt to have given her nod to contest from Kadapa. Apparently, the Congress high command thought Kadapa, the bastion of YSR family, will be the only suitable place for her electoral battle.
Needless to say, Sharmila’s entry will make the contest interestingly poised in Kadapa, as she will be taking on her own cousin and sitting YSR Congress party MP Y S Avinash Reddy.
Her candidature will be finalised by March 25, when the party is likely to release the list of contestants in Andhra Pradesh.
Jagan announced the candidature of Avinash Reddy for Kadapa for the third consecutive time by party president, while releasing the list of candidates for all the 175 assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Avinash and his father Bhaskar Reddy have been facing charges of conspiring the murder of Vivekananda Reddy in March 2019 at his residence in Pulivendula and have been named as the accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
As such, the graph of Avinash is rather down, though the people of Kadapa do not vote against Jagan’s party because of their respect for the YSR family. But if Jagan’s own sister Sharmila enters the fray, they would definitely be in a sort of dilemma, a party source said.
Being equally vociferous as her brother, Sharmila has been targeting Jagan in all her speeches and questioning his government’s non-performance. At the same time, she is targeting Avinash Reddy for conspiring in the murder of her uncle Y S Vivekananda Reddy.
She has been supporting Viveka’s daughter Dr N Sunitha in the latter’s fight for justice in her father’s murder case. At the fifth death anniversary held at Kadapa, Sharmila accused Jagan of protecting the accused in the Viveka murder case.
“Everybody knows who was behind the murder. Yet, Jagan did not take any action against them. Instead of standing by the side of Viveka’s family members, Jagan is instigating his party leaders to blame it on Sunitha and her family for the murder,” she said.
Both Sharmila and Sunitha called upon the people of the state to vote against the YSRCP in the coming elections and pull down Jagan from power, so that Viveka’s soul would rest in peace.
Under these circumstances, it would be interesting to see how the battle is going to be in Kadapa – whether the people would stand by the brother or sister.
Even if Sharmila doesn’t win the seat, she will definitely give Avinash a run for his money, sources said.