BJP to contest Visakha North seat

After a marathon meeting of over seven hours at the residence of Telugu Desam National President N Chandrababu Naidu at Vundavalli in Vijayawada on Monday, the TDP, BJP and JSP came out with a clear picture of the seats to be contested by each party in the upcoming general elections in Andhra Pradesh. According to sources, the BJP will contest the Visakha North seat, while the JSP is getting ready for the battle in the Visakha South constituency.

The three parties later stated the seat-sharing. According to it, the following is the break-up: TDP (144 Assembly and 17 Lok Sabha seats), JSP (21 Assembly and two parliament seats) and BJP (10 Assembly and six LS seats). The total number of seats in the Legislative Assembly is 175, while it is 25 in the case of Lok Sabha seats in the State.

The meeting was attended by Chandrababu Naidu, JSP chief Pawan Kalyan, and BJP leaders Shekhawat and Panda. In the reorganised district of Visakhapatnam, the BJP and the JSP are likely to contest one seat of each, while the TDP will be in the race for the remaining five seats. The TDP has already announced candidates for the Visakhapatnam East and Visakhapatnam West constituencies.

The TDP candidates Velagapudi Ramakrishna Babu (Visakha East) and PGVR Naidu (Visakha West) have already got into campaign mode interacting with voters. The party is yet to announce candidates for Gajuwaka, Bheemili and S Kota segments.

The BJP may field P Vishnukumar Raju again from the Visakha North seat, while the JSP is said to be considering the candidature of Vamsikrishna Srinivas, who, a couple of months ago, quit the YSRCP and joined the JSP.

In the 2019 election, Vishnukumar Raju lost the seat in the multi-cornered contest. Ganta Srinivasa Rao of TDP could swim to shore weathering the Jagan storm. He won the seat by a thin margin of over 1,900 votes defeating K K Raju of YSRCP. As the election notification is likely to be issued any day this month, parties are busy finalising candidates for the poll battle.

This article is written by Senior Journalist Lakkoju Nagesh Babu

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