EC Schedule Upset Jagan’s Plans?

The Election Commission has released the schedule for the Andhra Pradesh election and going by the confirmed listings, the polling will be on May 13 and the counting is on June 4th. The hook point here is that the YSR Congress camp reportedly expected polls to be held in April, and was taken aback when the EC scheduled the polling for May 13.

As per reports, Jagan was anticipating polling to be held in the first half of April and that is why he announced 175 MLA and 24 MP candidates in advance and also planned to release the party manifesto on March 20.

But with the official EC schedule differing from Jagan’s idea of the sequence of events, he is reportedly having to track back on his plans.

At first, the plan was to start the election campaign immediately after the schedule was announced. But now that the polls are two months away, Jagan had to plan an alternative and that’s when Memantha Siddham came up, which wasn’t a part of the plan initially.

The manifesto announcement which was initially supposed to happen on March 20 has been pushed to April 9th, on the auspicious occasion of Ugadi. There are unverified reports that Jagan might even change couple of candidates based on another round of surveys before the nomination process starts next month.

The unexpectedly elongated election schedule has led to many logistical changes in Jagan’s plan.