Wooed for Kapu votes by all parties, Mudragada Padmanabham to join YSRCP

He has been inactive in party politics since 2014, after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.

His move to the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led party is expected to result in a vote-split in the community where actor and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan enjoys a relatively huge “fanbase”.

The Jana Sena and the TDP are now a part of the BJP-led NDA in Andhra Pradesh.

Mudragada — with a political career spanning over 40 years — and “Power Star” Pawan Kalyan have “cult” images within the community. In a surprising turn of events, despite expectations of their unity for the 2024 elections, Mudragada chose the YSRCP.

Now, the question arises: What prompted Mudragada Padmanabham to choose the YSRCP over the Jana Sena or the BJP, despite earlier reports of negotiations?

His son Mudragada Giribabu points out the answer as the self-respect of the seventy-one-year-old politician who felt humiliated due to the delayed onboarding by both parties, ultimately leading his father to choose the ruling party that approached.

Much like the adage “When two fight, a third one wins,” the YSRCP took hold of the chance to woo the Kapu community, especially after it faced challenges of the “Reddy” party tag after scrapping the five percent EWC reservation status sanctioned to the Kapu community by the TDP in 2019.

This EWC reservation was accorded to Kapus by the TDP in the run-up to the 2019 elections to compensate for the earlier promise of including the Kapu community in the Backward Classes (BCs).

Related: Kapu community desires CM post in AP, but it’s a double-edged sword

The rise of Mudragada

Mudragada — who was an RSS worker — is a cinema hall and rice mill owner from a small village in Kirlampudi of East Godavari district.

He entered politics through his father Veera Raghava Rao, who was a two-time independent MLA of the Prattipadu constituency in the Godavari district.

He started his political career with the Janata Party in 1978 and was elected to the Assembly first time, along with the state’s former chief ministers Chandrababu Naidu and the late YS Rajasekhara Reddy.

However, Mudragada came to prominence only in the 1980s after the death of Vijayawada East Congress MLA and then Kapu leader Vangaveeti Mohan Ranga during matinee idol NT Rama Rao (NTR)-led TDP dispensation in the state.

There are allegations that NTR, who hailed from the other prominent community Kamma, had been under his skin.

Subsequently, he resigned as a minister in NTR’s Cabinet and started the Praja Rakshana Samiti and later his own Telugu Nadu Party. However, this was a very brief stint as he joined the Congress in 1988.

His journey since 1993 can be recalled not as a public representative but as a Kapu leader who advocated for the inclusion of the community in the BC, a change from the Open Category (OC).

Mudragada, a four-time MLA, held ministerial positions twice — once with the TDP and once with the Congress. He was also elected to the Lok Sabha in 1999 under the TDP banner.

Taking a break from politics after the bifurcation of the state in 2014, he came back into the limelight in 2016, when a meeting demanding reservation resulted in massive violence, leading to the burning down of the Ratnachal Express at Tuni.

Cases were booked against at least 41 people, including Mudragada. Since then, he has been shooting verbal salvos at Pawan Kalyan for liaising with the TDP which he alleges is an anti-Kapu party.

However, due to a rift within the community, he declared his decision to end his decades-long movement for the Kapu reservation in July 2020.

His decision came following the people from the community, especially those affiliated with Pawan Kalyan, questioning his vested interest in advocating for the Kapu reservation for political gains

In a letter, he expressed, “Criticism of my efforts to attain Backward Class (BC) status for Kapu, both on social media and TV channels by fellow Kapu individuals, has left me in shock, compelling me to withdraw from the movement.”

Read: As Mudragada crosses swords with Pawan Kalyan, YSRCP senses an opportunity

Mudragada’s row with Jana Sena

Though he had been inactive in politics and quit the Kapu movement, he has been firing shots against the TDP and the Jana Sena.

He was also seen attacking the TDP and YSRCP, claiming that the Dalit, BC, and Kapu communities are literal slaves to the two major communities (Kamma and Reddy) that have been ruling the state since the beginning.

However, for several reasons, Mudragada is now inclined towards the YSRCP, including his acquittal alongside 4o others in the Tuni train incident.

The beef took a surprising turn in January this year when Jana Sena leaders met Mudragada regarding the Kapu leader’s entry into the Pawan Kalyan-led party.

Following the negotiations, Jana Sena member Bolisetty Srinivas told South First that Mudragada was set to join the party on or before 26 January.

Subsequently, handing over a jolt to the Jana Sena and Kapu cults in the coastal region who expected the Kapu union, Mudragada announced his association with the YSRCP.

Also Read: Vicious trolling drives Andhra woman, who praised Jagan, to suicide

What went wrong in the Jana Sena plans?

Srinivas, who was a part of the Jana Sena team that had negotiations with Mudragada, told South First that Pawan Kalyan had to put the plans on hold as BJP leaders showed interest in landing Mudragada to their party.

He claimed that even though Mudragada was offered a Rajya Sabha ticket by the BJP, he chose the YSRCP.

However, his son, Mudragada Giribabu, speaking to the South First, said that his father had offered to work for Jana Sena, and questioned Pawan Kalyan’s bid to make him join the BJP without consulting him.

“If my father had any interest in working with the saffron party, he would have approached it directly, as he comes from the RSS background and was with the BJP for at least eight years,” Mudragada Giribabu added.

However, the BJP didn’t show much interest in onboarding him until very recently, when reports of him being approached by the YSRCP surfaced.

According to his close aide, the Rajya Sabha seat was a last-minute offering by the BJP alliance but he had already given his word to YS Jagan and proceeded accordingly with the same offer from the YSRCP.

Giribabu claimed that his father was humiliated after the Jana Sena kept him waiting even after he gave his nod.

He further pointed out his father’s letter to Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan with an indirect reference to Chandrababu Naidu for halting his onboarding to Pawan Kalyan’s party.

Also Read: The race for the Kapu community’s votes is hotting up

Mudragada effect

Senior journalist and political analyst Telakapalli Ravi, speaking to South First, responded to a question about Mudragada’s relevance in the current era.

He asserted that there was no doubt about Mudragada’s relevance as a senior politician, citing Pawan Kalyan’s earlier interest in onboarding as evidence.

Discussing the impact of Kapu equations, Ravi explained that the entire Kapu community never tilted uniformly towards one side.

He explained with the 2019 scenario where the community vote has been split among three parties: the Jana Sena, the TDP, and the YSRCP. In coastal Andhra, the YSRCP emerged as the overwhelming winner.

Ravi added that Pawan Kalyan’s attempts at social engineering and equilibrium within the Kapu community for the 2024 elections seem to have failed with the halfway negotiations.

He said that it’s a general assertion that the entire Kapu community is on one side. “Look at the 2019 elections, despite the significant number of Kapu community members in Gajuwaka and Bhimavaram, Kalyan lost in these seats,” said Ravi.

He remarked that expecting an overwhelming majority of the community’s votes towards one party was unrealistic.

However, Mudragada reportedly lost the support of the BC community since his association with the Kapu reservation demand, as the inclusion of the Kapu community in the BC quota is perceived as a threat to them.

As a result, Mudragada, who hadn’t experienced defeat until the 1994 election, tasted it in the same constituency that he had won earlier.

Addressing his inclusion affecting the BC vote bank of the YSRCP, Andhra BC Samkshema Sangam president Kesava Shankar Rao stated that there was no hostility between the two communities in the state.

However, if they were to campaign, they would support the BC community-nominated candidate over the general candidate.

(Edited by Muhammed Fazil)