The BJP has exuded confidence that the ensuing by-election to the Tirupati (SC) parliamentary constituency will be its springboard to success in Andhra Pradesh. Party State president Somu Veerraju, along with co in-charge (Andhra Pradesh) Sunil Deodhar, was speaking after a constituency-level review meeting here on Tuesday.
“Our party’s victory juggernaut in the State will start from Tirupati,” they said. The meeting, attended by Rajya Sabha member G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, national secretary Y. Satya Kumar, MLC Vakati Narayana Reddy and State general secretary Vishnuvardhan Reddy, took stock of the situation ahead of the elections.
The leaders announced that the BJP and Jana Sena combine would win the election hands down by taking the development agenda to the public.
Breathing fire at the ruling YSRCP, Mr. Veerraju asked the State government to go to the public seeking votes by showing at least one project that had not been funded by Centre.
“Be it the IIT, IISER, Indian Culinary Institute, Smart city or AMRUT, development of Tirupati could not have been possible without the central support,” he asserted.
He alleged that the TDP and YSRCP were trying to take credit for all the projects, without giving the Centre its due. “Though the successive State governments tried to hide the fact, the people know this very well,” he said.
Mr. Deodhar appealed to the party workers to reach not every doorstep, but touch ‘every heart’ with the development agenda.
Taking a dig at Leader of Opposition N. Chandrababu Naidu for his continued stay in Hyderabad, Mr. Narasimha Rao dubbed him as NRA (Non-Resident Andhrawala) and urged the public to confront him. Flaying the two ‘corrupt’ regional parties of having done more harm than good to the bifurcated State in its formative years, he said the people, waiting for a change, would certainly vote the BJP-Jana Sena alliance.
