AP By polls: Jagan Victory Spells Doom For Congress

The near-clean sweep by YSR Congress party in just concluded AP by polls for 1 Lok Sabha and 18 Assembly constituencies is certainly going to spell doom for the state Congress in immediate future and for the Centre in 2014. The YSRCP has won 15 out of 18 assembly seats along with the lone Nellore Lok Sabha seat by a whopping majority of 2,91,745 votes.

In 16 of the 18 assembly seats that have gone to by-elections, are being held because the sitting Congress MLAs were disqualified by the Assembly Speaker for switching loyalties to the YSR Congress and voting against the Congress government during a no-trust vote in December last year. Every seat that Jagan has won today will eat into the Congress' thin majority in the Andhra assembly. At present the ruling party has 151 seats in the 294-member Assembly and the hallway mark is at 148. 


Fall of Kiran Kumar government may not be the immediate concern for the Congress, but what is more alarming for it is the possibility of a mass exodus from the party into the Jagan camp. The 294 member AP assembly also has a big impact of the upcoming Presidential polls, as it forms an important part of the electoral college. A big win for Jagan Mohan Reddy may compound the Congress' problems and make it more difficult to install a UPA-backed candidate in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The results are also being keenly watched in Delhi. In 2004, the Congress had won 29 seats in Andhra Pradesh out of its overall tally of 145 seats in the Lok Sabha. This tally increased to 33 - out of 207 - in the current Lok Sabha. Andhra Pradesh sends 42 members to the Lok Sabha, and these polls are being seen as a curtain-raiser to the 2014 elections. Already news is making rounds that the Trinamool Congress chief Ms. Mamata Banerjee is trying to make contacts with YSRCP honorary president YS Vijayamma to garner support for her choice of presidential candidate.