The Vijayawada (Central) Assembly constituency is set to witness an intense electoral battle with candidates of both the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leaving no stone unturned to emerge victorious. The constituency is one of the three key Assembly segments falling under Vijayawada Lok Sabha constituency, which is close to the Amaravati capital region.
YSRCP candidate Velampalli Srinivas relocated to Central after his request to contest from Vijayawada (West) was turned down by the party. TDP candidate Bonda Umamaheswara Rao, who lost the election by a slender margin of 25 votes in the 2019 elections, is testing his luck again. The YSRCP opted to replace sitting MLA Malladi Vishnu with Mr. Srinivas on the basis of survey reports which reportedly indicated that voters were not too happy with Mr. Vishnu.
In the 2019 election, Mr. Umamaheswara Rao lost narrowly in a triangular contest. The Jana Sena Party (JSP) had supported CPI(M) candidate Ch. Babu Rao in 2019. Mr. Vishnu secured 70,721 votes while Mr. Umamaheswara Rao secured 70,696 votes. The CPI(M) leader was a distant third, polling 29,333 votes (16% of the vote share).
This time around, while Mr. Babu Rao is again in the fray on a CPI(M) ticket, the TDP candidate enjoys the support of the BJP and the JSP.
It is to be seen whether the denial of a ticket to Mr. Vishnu will have an impact on the results if the demographic profile of the constituency were to be considered. Two major communities—Kapus and Brahmins—are likely to influence the poll outcome. Kapus account for 11.83% vote share, followed by Brahmins (9.3%), Muslims (8%) and Scheduled Castes (10%).
Mr. Vishnu belongs to the Brahmin community while Mr. Srinivasa Rao belongs to the Vyshya community. For the electorate, Mr. Srinivasa Rao is seen as an outsider as he relocated here from Vijayawada (West). Mr. Babu Rao, for his part, is also going the extra mile in hopes of a victory. He launched his campaign even before the election schedule was announced, and is busy on a marathon door-to-door campaign.
Both the TDP and YSRCP are striving to win the support of voters from all communities. A longstanding belief that whichever party wins Vijayawada Central will go on to win the State has added a lot of intrigue to the electoral battle.
The long-pending demands in the constituency include the completion of a Rail Over-Bridge (ROB) near Madhura Nagar railway station and a second flyover near Ajith Singh Nagar. The residents of Ajith Singh Nagar have been insisting that the dumping yard near their colony be shifted as it is causing health issues. Traffic snarls are also a major issue, and the roads are riddled with potholes. Sanitation and drainage are also problem areas, with locals attributing it to improper management of the several canals connected to the Krishna river that pass through the area.
Three canals — Eluru, Ryves and Bandaru — have been neglected by the government, and the apathy has resulted in indiscriminate dumping of garbage, often blocking the inlets and outlets, say locals.
