Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and YSRCP president YS Jaganmohan Reddy on Saturday created a record of sorts by allotting 50 percent of his party’s tickets for the ensuing Assembly and Lok Sabha elections to candidates belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Backward Classes (BC) and Minorities.

The party’s list was announced at YS Rajasekhara Reddy’s memorial in Idupulapaya of Kadapa district after YS Jagan paid obeisance to his father. Significantly, the ruling party in Andhra Pradesh unveiled its battlelines, hours before the Election Commission of India (ECI) sounded the poll bugle in Delhi by announcing the schedule for a seven-phase election. As acknowledged by YS Jagan, the lone exception to today’s exercise was Anakapalle Assembly seat which the party kept on hold and is likely to be announced in the next few days.

In a repeat of a similar event before the 2019 elections, YSRCP senior leader Dharmana Prasada Rao, a BC, and Nandigam Suresh hailing from the SC community, announced the names of the party’s candidates for Assembly and Lok Sabha elections respectively. Of a total of 200 seats (Assembly and Lok Sabha seats put together), the YSRCP has allotted 50 percent (100 seats) to the above-mentioned downtrodden sections. Later addressing the event, YS Jagan described it as a unique record that was unheard of before, not just in Andhra Pradesh but the entire country.

As both the lists of nominees bore the imprints of YS Jagan’s deft social engineering skills in electoral politics, the YSRCP bettered its own previous record of 2019 by fielding as many as 59 (Assembly 48 and Lok Sabha 11) BC candidates.

In the Assembly list, the party managed to maintain the same numbers for SCs (29) and STs (7) like in 2019. It accommodated seats to seven more BC candidates as opposed to the 41 given in the previous elections. Similarly, there is a considerable increase in seats allotted to Minorities which rose from five in 2019 to seven now in 2024.

Even the women representation in both the Assembly and Lok Sabha soared to 19 candidates this time as against 15 in 2019. Claiming that this accounted for a 12 percent representation for women, YS Jagan lamented that he was not satisfied with this as he aspires to do more for the welfare and upliftment of women. He vowed to take all necessary steps to further augment women’s representation in the political realm as soon as his party retains power in the state after the 2024 elections.

In a bold move that no other party would even shudder to think, the YSRCP replaced as many as 99 (81 Assembly and 18 Lok Sabha) candidates in comparison to its 2019 list. These also include 32 Assembly and 14 MP seats that the party had won. While acknowledging this fact on this occasion, YS Jagan also opted for a conciliatory approach towards sore losers, promising to reward them with positions of respectability when his party wins the second term.

Among other significant features, the YSRCP’s candidates’ lists represent 77 percent of candidates with educational qualifications of graduation or more. There are 17 doctors, 34 engineers and two former civil servants in this mix as well.

YSRCP choses women power to tame TDP-Janasena’s ‘star power’

In another strikingly interesting feature, the YSRCP has chosen three women candidates to fight against TDP-Janasena’s Nandamuri Balakrishna, Nara Lokesh and Pawan kalyan. In Hindupur Assembly constituency where Balakrishna won two successive terms, the YSRCP chose TN Deepika with the steely resolve to wrest this seat this time around.

Nara Lokesh, who is hoping for some luck in his second attempt in Mangalagiri, will have to fight it out with the ruling party’s Murugudu Lavanya. Lavanya, hailing from the dominant weavers’ community, has an equally strong political lineage. Similar is the case of Pawan Kalyan in Pithapuram where the Power Star will have to use all his energies to overcome a formidable Vanga Geetha. Vanga Geetha, currently a Member of Parliament, comes with a rich legislative experience, having been elected to the Assembly and Lok Sabha before representing the Congress and Chiranjeevi’s Prajarajyam, before joining the YSRCP.