A seat-sharing agreement between BJP and actor-politician Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena for next month’s Assembly elections in Telangana appears unlikely while the leaders of the saffron party are busy in Delhi giving final touches to the first list of candidates.
Pawan Kalyan is under pressure from Jana Sena Party (JSP) cadres in Telangana to contest the elections this time and the party has already released a list of 32 seats it wants to contest. Many of the constituencies where JSP wants to field candidates are in urban areas, especially in and around Hyderabad.
The party hopes to bank on Pawan Kalyan’s fan following and the voters hailing from Andhra Pradesh. Political observers say since these are the urban segments where BJP claims to have a good support base, it may not agree to leave them for the JSP.
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BJP state president G. Kishan Reddy and party MP K. Laxman called on Pawan Kalyan two days ago requesting him to campaign for the party candidates. The JSP leader, however, informed them that his party plans to contest at least 30 seats.
He recalled that in 2014 he had campaigned for TDP and BJP candidates in Andhra Pradesh and on the request of BJP leadership did not contest Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections in 2021.
The actor-politician conveyed to the BJP leaders that if this time JSP does not contest at least 30 seats in Telangana, this would affect the morale of the party.
Kishan Reddy declined to reveal what he discussed with Pawan Kalyan but there have been no indications so far from the saffron camp that it is keen for an electoral alliance with the JSP. The BJP leaders have all along maintained that the party will contest the Telangana elections on its own.
Pawan Kalyan’s JSP is a constituent of BJP-led NDA. Last month, he announced an alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh for next year’s polls and hoped that BJP will also join them to avoid a split of anti-YSRCP votes.
JSP’s alliance with TDP, however, may not extend to Telangana. Facing a crisis due to the arrest of its leader and former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in a corruption case in Andhra Pradesh, TDP remained undecided about its plans for Telangana elections.
On October 2, the JSP released a list of 32 Assembly seats saying it is ready to contest on these seats to realize the goal of the Telangana movement.
They include Kukatpally, Uppal, LB Nagar, Malkajgiri, Serilingampally, Medchal, Patancheru, Qutubullapur, and Sanathnagar constituencies in and around Hyderabad. The list also includes constituencies in undivided Khammam district. All these constituencies have a considerable number of voters of Andhra origin.
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