The wheel has turned full circle for the BJP and Jana Sena Party (JSP) in Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) five years after bifurcation as they have revived their alliance sans the TDP with a joint victory in the 2024 elections as its primary objective. While regrouping, the BJP has clarified that it is not going to have any relation or understanding with the YSR Congress Party (YSRC) or the TDP.
Calling it a turning point, BJP State president Kanna Lakshminarayana said the two parties would together contest all elections from the ensuing polls for local bodies to general elections and fight the “anti-people policies” of the YSRCP government and take to legal recourse on substantive issues such as shifting capital city from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam, if the situation warranted.
Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Mr. Lakshminarayana said both the YSRCP and the TDP had pushed the State into dire straits by taking arbitrary decisions.
Kanna warns govt.
He said he was not considering January 20 when the proposal to shift the capital was likely to be cleared in the Assembly, as the deadline because the government took many controversial decisions such as the review of renewable power purchase agreements but it could not implement them. The government should, therefore, not think that it could act as per its whims and fancies, he observed.
JSP chief Pawan Kalyan said it was due to a communication gap that the two parties got separated earlier, but had in the last few months sorted out the differences in the interests of the State.
The JSP-BJP alliance was aimed at fighting against caste, corruption and dynastic politics in A.P. as both the YSRCP and the TDP had treated the State as their fiefdom, Mr. Kalyan said, asserting that it would emerge as a strong third alternative to the regional parties in A.P. and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah have supported it.
BJP A.P. affairs in-charge Sunil Deodhar said the alliance was for the betterment of people of A.P. and the Central party conveyed its best wishes to it. BJP leaders G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, Daggubati Purandeswari and Somu Veerraju and JSP political affairs committee chairman Nadendla Manohar, former MLC Kandula Durgesh, and former Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu P. Ramamohan Rao were among those present.
