BJP eyeing Naidu-Pawan duo for JH by-poll campaign
Hyderabad: Political temperature is rising in the Jubilee Hills by-election as the BJP considers bringing Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan into the campaign arena to bolster its prospects.
The high-stakes contest has three prominent candidates in the fray - Congress nominee Naveen Yadav; BRS candidate Maganti Sunitha, wife of former MLA Maganti Gopinath; and BJP’s Deepak Reddy. With the Congress and BRS already in full swing, the BJP is now looking to inject fresh energy into its campaign by leveraging the star power of its Andhra allies. Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy has taken the Jubilee Hills contest as a prestige issue, personally leading the campaign for his party candidate. Ministers and Congress leaders are already conducting door-to-door outreach in the constituency. Meanwhile, BRS working president KT Rama Rao has assumed complete responsibility for ensuring Sunitha’s victory, intensifying his ground campaign.
In this backdrop, the BJP is keen on making a strategic move by roping in Naidu and Pawan Kalyan, who lead the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Jana Sena Party (JSP) respectively. Both leaders share an alliance with the BJP in Andhra Pradesh and are key partners in the ruling coalition there.
Party sources say discussions are underway on whether to send a delegation to Amaravati to invite them personally or to route the request through BJP national president JP Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
The constituency’s voter profile is seen as the driving factor behind this move. Out of the three lakh voters in Jubilee Hills, more than 1.5 lakh are estimated to be from Seemandhra. Among them, the Kapu and Kamma communities hold significant influence, along with a large number of film industry professionals - estimated at around 30,000 voters. The party estimated that the Seemandhra voters are more than one and a half lakh. Of this, Kapu community voters are the highest after the Muslim minority communities, while the Kamma community has more than 25 thousand voters.
