Telugu Desam Party has announced the complete list of its contesting candidates. TDP will be contesting in 144 MP seats and 17 MP seats after leaving out a few seats to Janasena and BJP.
There are protests in the party after the announcement of each list. The leaders who did not get tickets protested against the party leadership. While the situation is settled in most seats, there are issues still in at least half a dozen seats.
The dissent is mostly because of allotting seats to the BJP. There is one and a half months time for the elections and most issues will be settled by then.
YSR Congress is very happy about these developments and hope these candidates will turn rebel and defeat the alliance candidates.
But then, there is a different opinion about this in the Political Experts.
“There is dissent and disappointment when anyone fails to get a ticket from a winning party. Jagan changed more than thirty candidates from the last time. There are no protests anywhere. That can be a bad sign too. The leaders may be not sure of the party coming to power and so are okay being left out,” they say.
There are rumors in political circles that the YSR Congress is offering big money to TDP leaders to contest as Rebels. There are rumors that Jagan offered 10 Crore to Dandu Siva Ramaraju to contest as a Rebel in the Undi constituency.
With Rebels, there are chances that they split the votes of TDP and allies, so Chandrababu has to be careful with Rebels. The protests are unlikely to have any impact. We have seen how the protests in Pitapuram got pacified later.
Also, the TDP cadre is supporting the rebels in seats especially where BJP candidates are saying that there is no chance of the saffron party winning those seats. Chandrababu also has to work out a way in such seats.
