Race for Secunderabad gets closer

It may not be a ‘cakewalk’ for Srinivas Yadav in the Assembly constituency

Talasani Srinivas Yadav


Jayasudha

HYDERABAD: The race is surely getting closer. What was thought and predicted to be a ‘cakewalk’ for Talasani Srinivas Yadav in Secunderabad Assembly constituency is not so anymore now. More and more residents, especially slum-dwellers, are starting to warm up to actor Jayasudha, who appears to have been effective in shedding the outsider tag by leveraging her charisma.

In the recent Secunderabad byelection, Mr. Yadav had defeated his Congress rival Pitla Krishna by 18,067 votes.

This time round, however, things don’t look all that easy for him. Ms Jayasudha is managing to strike a chord, especially with women, here and this could be a big reason for the race to get tighter.

Observers

The fact that local Congress leaders, who expected to get nominated, were not cooperative initially during the campaign has now subsided.

The Congress has sent election observers to Secunderabad to keep a check on the campaign and this appears to have worked.

Mr. Yadav, however, has a reputation and a strong base at the grassroot level in several divisions of Secunderabad. The former Tourism Minister in the TDP government lost in 2004 to the TRS’ Padma Rao by 3,070 votes only to come back strongly in the byelection.

Mr. Yadav first became an MLA in 1994, thanks largely to the N. T. Rama Rao wave, by defeating Mary Ravindranath of the Congress. In 1999, he repeated this performance by defeating the same candidate by 37,523 votes. Just when Mr. Yadav was hoping for a hat-trick, he lost to Mr. Padma Rao.

Yadav camp tense

The Praja Rajyam has fielded Mekala Sarangapani, a well-known follower of Mr. Yadav, in Secunderabad. The fact that Mr. Sarangapani has a reasonable following in pockets of Secundrabad and could wean away votes from the TDP to PR is making Mr. Yadav’s camp a bit tense.

Secunderabad has 1,95,667 voters and 10 per cent of the voters are Christians. It’s clearly a two-horse race in Secunderabad with Mr. Sarangapani having the potential to play spoilsport by cutting into the TDP and Congress support base.