Chandrababu Naidu and his Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which formed the opposition, noticed a striking political overturn in Andhra Pradesh after leading in 16 Lok Sabha and 130 assembly constituencies. This revival positions Mr Naidu for the versatile role of leading the party to a successful 2024 Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh as well as the Lok Sabha Elections.
Currently, the ruling political party is the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP), which came into power at the end of the 2019 assembly election with 151 out of 175 seats led by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. While the YSRCP had a sweeping victory in some important districts such as Kadapa, Kurnool, Nellore, and Vizianagaram, the incumbent TDP suffered heavily to win only 23 seats, leaving the new party alliance, the JSP, with only a single seat.
Going against Antony and aligning his party with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls ended up costing Chandrababu Naidu dearly. The TDP could not even win a single seat in the Lok sabha or assembly election, thus politically isolating Mr Naidu.
Fast forward to 2024, and Mr Naidu has pulled a spectacular figure, astonishing all those who had written him off as a superlative hasta. His arrest in November 2023 on corruption charges was actually quite helpful to him, even though this is not something that one would expect from an arrest in general. The issues of misgovernance and corruption mainly charged against the YSRCP MLAs created sympathy for Mr Naidu and sufficed disgruntlement among the voters. Mr Naidu jumped ship from Congress and returned to the NDA just a week before the announcement of the national election in March 2024. This strategic move ensured that he stood as a successful prospect in the forthcoming polls.
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