Did Sharmila Successfully Eat from Jagan’s Plate?

YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress is an unassailable force in the Rayalaseema region. This can be understood if we look at the fact that the party won 49 out of the 52 assembly segments in the Seema region in the 2019 election. YCP outrightly dominated TDP here.

But come 2024, the equation has changed almost completely. On one side, there is the anti-incumbency factor and on the other, there is the Sharmila factor. Sharmila, who was extremely determined to eat into the vote bank of her brother Jagan to hit him politically where it hurts the most, spent 26 days campaigning in the Seema region.

The idea is clearly to eat into the Seema vote bank of Jagan and break the back of the party in a segment which is regarded as its stronghold. An evident facto here is that Kadapa, which recorded 73% polling in 2019 saw a sharp 10% jump to reach 83% turnout in 2024.

Had the polling been in the 73% range like in 2019, it would have been safe to assume Jagan’s YCP is on right track. But shockingly for YCP, there is a 10% difference here which could go either way.

This sharp spike in voter turnout is leaving YCP anxious as the party supporters are not sure if Sharmila managed to influence the voters and hijack Jagan’s vote bank by using the Vivekananda Reddy murder topic and highlighting CM Jagan’s failures over the last five years. If Sharmila really could deal any damage to YCP in Seema, then the road gets tricky for the Jagan party in all of AP.