KURNOOL, Jan 25: Congress Working Committee (CWC) member and former chief minister Kotla Vijayabhaskar Reddy is facing the toughest election of his long and chequered political career. The 78-year-old Congress leader is pitted against arch rival K E Krishnamurthy of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), who is doing everything to upset Reddy in the constituency which sent him to the Lok Sabha five times.The only time Vijayabhaskar lost a Lok Sabha election here was in 1984 when he was defeated by TDP's E Ayyapu Reddy, who was helped by the current anti-Congress wave in the state. Congress won just six of the 42 seats in the state in that election. Vijayabhaskar began campaigning for this election in the third week of December, indicative of the serious fight he faces from Krishnamurthy. Of the seven Assembly segments in the constituency, TDP represents Dhone, Yemmiganur, Alur, Adoni and Pattikonda.
The ruling party's ally, CPM, represents Kurnool while Congress has the lone Kodumur seat.
The former chief ministerwon the 1996 election by a margin of 32,000 votes against Roads and Buildings Minister S V Subba Reddy. This was largely because of the majority he secured in Kurnool and Kodumur assembly segments, Vijayabhaskar's strongholds. The margin in these two constituencies helped him neutralise the deficit of 25,000 votes in Dhone segment, a fiefdom of Krishnamurthy, while the strength of the two parties is almost equal in the other segments.
With Krishnamurthy himself entering the fray, the equations in this faction-ridden constituency are undergoing a quick change. NTR-TDP leader D Vishnuvardhan Reddy, who secured 30,000 votes in Kurnool and Kodumur segments in the 1996 election, has joined TDP and declared his support for Krishnamurthy.
Congress leaders are putting up a brave front saying there is no threat to Vijayabhaskar's political future. The anti-establishment mood among the voters will further improve the party position, particularly in the urban segment of Kurnool, they said.
Meanwhile, factional
politics is back again in Nandyal, the constituency which shot to fame when P V Narasimha Rao was elected from here in 1991 as prime minister. Rao was re-elected in 1996 but vacated the seat which was wrested by B V Nagi Reddy of the Telugu Desam in the subsequent bye-poll.
The Congress completely lost its hold on this segment when it fielded an outsider, former Union Minister P V Rangayya Naidu, in the by-election which Nagi Reddy won by a huge margin of over four lakh votes. With the Congress fielding Rajya Sabha member Gangula Pratap Reddy this time, the fight will be between the two arch rivals. Pratap Reddy was elected to the Assembly from Allagadda segment in 1985 and then to the Lok Sabha in 1991. He vacated the Lok Sabha seat to accommodate Narasimha Rao, and was later made a member of the Rajya Sabha. Nagi Reddy won from Allagadda in a by-election in 1992 and ever since consolidated his position.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
