Hyderabad: YSR Telangana Party chief Y.S. Sharmila will not contest the upcoming Telangana polls and will support the Congress instead, the leader announced Friday. The decision, Sharmila said, is to keep the anti-incumbency vote intact against the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
Sharmila’s decision is a marked departure from her earlier stance of contesting all 119 Assembly seats in the 30 November polls.
The daughter of former Congress chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, wrote to Rahul Gandhi Friday, pledging her “unconditional support” to the Congress citing surveys that apparently indicated that her participation would affect the principal Opposition’s vote share.
“Various surveys and ground reports indicate that our participation in the assembly elections will directly impact the vote share of the Congress in many constituencies. Therefore, the YSR Telangana Party has decided to withdraw from the Telangana assembly election contest. I have taken this important decision in the larger interest of the state and its people,” Sharmila said in the letter, while “wishing that the Congress party does well in the upcoming elections”.
Incidentally, Sharmila had met Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi on 31 August in New Delhi, and later described the chat as “constructive”.
Sharmila had formed the YSRTP in July 2021, breaking away from her elder brother and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, who heads the ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) there.
On Friday, Sharmila also urged YSRTP leaders, cadres, and supporters “to join forces and strengthen the Congress party at this crucial juncture for a better Telangana”.
She said the Congress — “the largest secular party in the country” — was better placed to replace Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s BRS.
“With more and more revelations of BRS corruption, failures in Kaleshwaram project and misrule seeing the light of day, we see the dire need for all like-minded parties to put up a joint effort in the best interest of the people of Telangana. In scripting the imminent defeat of BRS, it is felt that Congress party stands a chance, and any division of anti-incumbency votes at this stage will be a hurdle in dethroning KCR,” Sharmila said in her letter to Rahul Gandhi.
Sharmila’s strategy in the state
Ever since she formed her party, Sharmila has relentlessly targeted the BRS. She also went on a 3,800-kilometre padayatra last October, but her electoral prospects have so far remained untested.
From early 2023, though, Sharmila went soft on the Congress, hoping for a merger or an alliance. Before meeting the Gandhis, she had also travelled to Bengaluru in May to congratulate Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar for the party’s victory in the Karnataka polls.
A merger with Sharmila’s party was, however, opposed by the Telangana unit of the Congress, with state chief Revanth Reddy openly calling her a “person from Andhra”. He also called her “an arrow from KCR’s quiver”, while fellow party leader Jagga Reddy said she was a BJP tool to hurt the Congress’s vote-bank.
In October, Sharmila admitted that she had tried for a merger with the Congress for four months, adding, “Good it did not happen… Now, no one can accuse us of splitting the anti-incumbency vote. The blame is not on us.”
Sharmila, who was keen on contesting herself from Palair in Khammam — an area adjoining her brother’s turf Andhra Pradesh — shelved that plan too in favour of Congress candidate Ponguleti Srinivasa Reddy.
Reddy had won the Khammam Lok Sabha segment as the YSRCP candidate in the 2014 polls, the only MP seat Jaganmohan Reddy’s party ever got in Telangana. He joined KCR’s BRS party in 2016 before shifting to the Congress this July.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)