Is YS Jagan losing strength in Andhra Pradesh owing to his inability to keep his crop of legislators together to stay glued to his party? The answer on the face of it is simple: It is an emphatic yes. The reasons are all too well known.

Apart from the lure or the lucre which cannot denied, there are other offers that draw the MLAs toward the ruling party.
That said, Jagan’s weakness of remaining incommunicado, and the stigma of court cases he carries and also his “perceived unresponsiveness” too are driving a wedge within the YSR Congress.

But is he alone to blame for the situation? Is it not a similar crisis that the Telugu Desam Party is also facing in Telangana?

Chandrababu Naidu isn’t inaccessible and “unresponsive”. He has the necessary muscle to keep his flock together too. Yet, his party has been reduced to a meager three MLAs from a respectable 15 in Telangana Assembly. His trusted lieutenants gave letters officially to the presiding officers of both Houses of Legislature seeking a merger with the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi.

Now, whatever Jagan is being targeted for in AP by those MLAs who left his party applies exactly to Naidu in Telangana.

Though Venkaiah Naidu is repeatedly saying that he is working overtime to get the delimitation of Assembly seats to taken up by the Parliament, the long procedure involved in taking the enhancement of seats in the legislatures to a logical end.

Venkaiah Naidu keeps in talking about it saying that he had already discussed with Ministry of Home Affairs and it would go to Law Department. The Government would also seek the opinion of the Attorney-General of India and take the Bill to the Parliament.

But the biggest hurdle would be securing the nod of different legislatures in several States. Also, the BJP, which is arm-twisting its NDA partner, the TDP, at every given occasion, may also not have much of an interest to ensure the enhancement of number of seats, for as a party, its stakes in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are very limited.

Just in case, the delimitation doesn’t conclude the way it is expected,
whether Chandrababu Naidu isn’t giving readymade contestants to Jagan, by leaving those who lost the polls on TDP ticket in 2014 to move to the YSR Congress at the nick of the minute on the eve of the next elections becomes a moot question?
Those who are nursing a grievance against the TDP leadership for admitting their rivals into the party may have swallowed the bitter pill grudgingly for now.

But Naidu cannot give tickets to two candidates from each constituency and this will trun out to be a political nemesis for him, without any doubt.

Why is Jagan unable to hold his flock together?

Running a political party is more cutthroat than being the CEO of a corporate house. At least MLAs and MPs should be able to meet the leader of their party without appointment, as long as he is not Chief Minister. But surely Jagan is unable to meet this mandate, much to the chagrin of his teams.

Jagan committed the mistake of giving an impression to people that he had taken them for granted by fielding co-accused Ayodhyarami Reddy, Koneru Prasad and others in 2014 elections. He wants to repeat the same with his colleague legislators too by fielding Vijaya Sai Reddy for the Rajya Sabha seat which his party, for now, can get. If he changes the nominee for any reason, it is surely because of the pressure mounted by the exodus of legislators.

National party hopes of TDP doomed

While Asaduddin Owaisi has made his national presence felt by contesting in Bihar, winning two seats in Maharashtra and now fielding three candidates in Tamil Nadu, the Telugu Desam Party, which bragged about emerging as a national party soon after the two States of Andhra and Telangana are formed, has almost given up on the idea. The TDP leaders and their media – conventional and social – bleaters may reject this.

But the fact remains naked. With party moving its headquarters to Guntur (Amaravati – Capital Region) from Hyderabad, the NTR Trust Bhavan now only has a historic value.

Though the party is claiming that the Hyderabad office would be its national headquarters, the party neither fulfills the criterion to becoming a national party as prescribed by the Representation of People Act nor is it coming up with any strategy — contesting elections in different States.

While two Southern States are going to polls, the TDP is not even considering to contest, except for having Chandrababu Naidu as the national president and his son Lokesh, the national general secretary. These designations are very much notional in nature.

With the TRS gobbling up its MLAs, decimating the party to a non-entity with a humiliating one out of 150 seats in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections held two months ago, the so-called cadre-based party’s hopes are dashed for now. It did not open its account in Khammam and Warangal municipal corporations and even in Siddipet municipality.

So, the exodus in AP comes in handy to taunt Jagan in AP, and campuflage its loss in Telangna.