Accordingly YS Jagan's Praja Sankalpa Yatra, a 2,000 km journey on foot across all 13 districts and 130 Assembly constituencies of Andhra Pradesh, has sent political temperatures soaring, from Hyderabad all the way to Delhi, forcing his rival and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader Chandrababu Naidu’s hand and rocking what seemed until now a steady alliance between the TDP and the BJP.
Furthermore a string of high profile exits from the party had left the party reeling. Further from 66 MLAs and eight MPs in 2014, the YSRCP is now down to 46 MLAs and six members in Parliament. Reportedly he urgently needed an issue and, in December last year, somewhere near Uravakonda in Anantapur district, he came up with one Special Category Status and besides, special status was an emotive issue for a state that had been the reluctant byproduct of the demand for a separate Telangana state.
Moreover Jagan changed gears and he announced that “all problems” facing the state from low prices for agriculture produce to the state’s revenue deficit were because the TDP had failed to get the state special status. Apparently as Jagan walks on, strategists and political analysts wonder if he can sustain the rhetoric on special status and they point to how, in October 2015, Jagan sat on a fast for a few days at Nallapadu in Guntur to demand special category, but the issue soon petered out.
