TDP cadre vows to gift Chandragiri seat to Chandrababu Naidu

Tirupati: The TDP cadre in Chandragiri constituency on Sunday vowed to fight it hard and will gift the seat to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

In the party meeting held at Kalyana mandapam in the constituency on Sunday, all the leaders who spoke stressed on the need to come on to a common platform leaving aside their differences to win the seat from the YSRCP. It was the first meeting after the party district president Pulivarthy Nani was made in-charge of the constituency recently by the Chief Minister.

TUDA Chairman and party district general secretary G Narasimha Yadav, MP Dr N Sivaprasad and party politburo member Galla Aruna Kumari along with MPPs, ZPTC members, party mandal presidents and other leaders took part in the meeting.

It may be noted that the TDP has last won the seat in 1994 when Nara Ramamurthy Naidu, brother of Chief Minister emerged victorious. Chandrababu Naidu had won the seat in 1978 and became MLA for the first time and lost to independent candidate in 1983.

Galla Aruna Kumari won the seat in 1989, 1999, 2004 and 2009. She lost the election in 1994 and 2014. Significantly, TDP has won the seat only two times since it was formed in 1983. Being the native place of Chief Minister, Chandragiri has become a thorn in eye for him all these years.

Though he fielded four-time MLA Aruna Kumari after she joins TDP from the Congress after bifurcation of state in 2014 elections, the party lost the election to YSRCP by a narrow margin.

When Aruna Kumari was reluctant to contest again and conveyed her decision to party supremo, he held hectic parleys with party district and constituency leaders and finalised the name of Pulivarthy Nani as in-charge of the segment giving a strong signal that he will be the obvious choice of party to become the candidate in 2019.

Aruna Kumari has the strong cadre since she was made the politburo member and she supported Nani and assured all help. The leaders from all six mandals in the constituency opined that it was painful to see Aruna’s defeat and no mistake should take place next time in getting Nani elected easily.

Some leaders have said that though Chandrababu Naidu has been winning the hearts of many in the world and achieving success everywhere, Chandragiri was one constituency which made a black spot in the party history and it was difficult to digest the failure in the native constituency.

“Now the time has come for us to make the Chief Minister proud by winning this seat. We should have no personal agenda for the next six months except to work for the party and gift Naidu the Chandragiri seat,” they underlined.

Sivaprasad said Nani would be the perfect choice and seeing the response of cadre, he has no doubts about his victory. Aruna Kumari said the party position was too bad when she took over in 2014 which has been changed considerably in the last four years and she has made several party workers as leaders.