NEW DELHI: With his clean sweep of both the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in
Andhra Pradesh, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has gained a special status in national politics. YSRCP’s stunning performance has not only given Jagan the coveted CM’s post, the party was doing exceedingly well in the Lok Sabha polls too, leading in 22 out of 25 seats in the state at the time of going to the press.
In fact, at the time of going to press, YSRCP was poised to become the second largest party in the Lok Sabha from the south, just behind DMK. But despite the numbers, Jagan will now struggle to keep the one promise around which his entire campaign revolved — getting special category status (SCS) for Andhra Pradesh. Jagan could still strike a positive relationship with the BJP
top brass
, including PM
Narendra Modi, but it will be difficult to convince the central government to give the status now that BJP does not need any external support in parliament.
His rival and TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu had snapped ties with the BJP in 2018 over the Centre not keeping its word on SCS and other promises made in 2014 under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act. The NDA government had denied SCS stating that Andhra Pradesh did not meet the parameters set by various finance commissions. Hoping that no party may get a majority to form the government at the Centre, Jagan had been saying that his party would back any outfit that would grants SCS to the state. He thought that his party’s impressive tally in the Lok Sabha would improve his bargaining capacity with the ruling alliance at the Centre. “SCS is still high on our agenda. We will chalk out an action plan to achieve it,” said Jagan.
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