Vijayawada West 'paradise' for new parties

Vijayawada: The Vijayawada West Assembly constituency has a unique specialty in AP politics.

The voters of Vijayawada West constituency always welcome the new parties.

Whenever a new party is established, the voters of West constituency prefer to elect the candidates of new party instead of existing party leaders.

TDP candidate BS Jaya Raj was elected for the Assembly when the party was established in 1983.

PRP candidate Velampalli Srinivas was elected in party's first election in 2009.

YSR Congress candidate Jaleel Khan was elected in 2014.

Now the Jana Sena is in race to continue the tradition.

Interestingly, its party candidate has now emerged as strong contender against the TDP and YSRCP candidates.

In fact, Vijayawada West constituency has strong track record for Left parties and the Congress party.

So far, the Congress won six times and CPI won five times in the constituency.

The other parties like the TDP, erstwhile PRP and the YSRCP won each once during the establishment period.

The TDP fielded a college lecturer, B S Jayaraj in 1983 and he registered a surprise victory.

Later, the TDP could not succeed in subsequent elections.

In the later years, the erstwhile PRP gave ticket to a new face and local business man Velamapalli Srinivas.

He also registered unexpected victory.

In the last Assembly election former MLA Jaleel Khan won the seat surprisingly.

Before 2014, no MLA was elected for second time except Jaleel Khan.

Jaleel Khan was elected on Congress ticket in 1999.

Former Congress leader Abdul Azeez said that Jaleel Khan created a new record by getting elected for second time contesting on a new party ticket.

Speaking to The Hans India, he said that the constituency has specialty in politics.

Now, the speculations are rife on prospects of Jana Sena candidate Pothina Venkata Mahesh.

Indeed, he is relatively a new face to politics.

But he belongs to Nagaralu community which has nearly 30,000 voters in the constituency.

Moreover, they have been expressing displeasure over the political parties terming that their community is being neglected for the last several years.

In this backdrop, the candidature of Pothina Mahesh has gained significance suddenly though he does not have any political and financial background.