The Congress that bagged 29 seats and helped 17 Left candidates get elected to the general body of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) in the 2005 municipal election, could not claim even a single division this time.
The VMC was a Congress bastion, with the party bagging 24 of the 50 divisions in 2000 when a TDP candidate, Panchumarti Anuradha, was directly elected as Mayor. The system of electing a Mayor was subsequently changed, and indirect election was introduced.
In 2005, the Congress, along with its allies, bagged 46 divisions, leaving the remaining 10 divisions for the TDP. The Congress was gracious enough to give the Communist Party of India the Mayor’s post based on rotation system that was agreed upon by the allies. CPI corporator Tadi Sakuntala thus became the first Mayor.
By the 2009 general elections, the Congress had a fallout with its second ally, the CPI, which fielded rivals in the Vijayawada West Constituency.
Congress candidates in Vijayawada East and West Assembly constituencies were defeated by Praja Rajyam Party candidates, resulting in further weakening of the party in the city.
Though PRP MLAs Vellampalli Srinivas and Yallamanchili Ravi joined the Congress after their party merged with it, both of them left the Congress just before the election. The reason for their defection is the way the Congress had divided the State. Neither the Congress nor the CPI has won even a single division in the city.
