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Published Aug 12, 2024 | 3:02 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 12, 2024 | 3:02 PM
YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. (X)
At times, the boom of Air Force jets adds to the great depression that has befallen YSRCP chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
The post-poll Grapes of Wrath has Jagan at the center rather than John Steinbeck’s Joads. Unlike the poor Joads, Jagan was benevolent, who doled out ₹2.6 lakh crore in cash to the people of Andhra Pradesh as part of various welfare schemes.
Each scheme had ensured to remind the people that Jagananna was the benevolent leader. Frequent jacket advertisements screamed the details of each scheme from rooftops. Newspaper editions had then waited for advertisements, which landed on editorial desks much past the “sacred” deadlines.
Yet, the ‘trusted’ electorate ‘turned Brutus’. Jagan and YSRCP had little time to realise what had hit them, and exclaim, Et Tu Brute! It poll debacle was too unexpected.
The shock was evident when Jagan faced the media, a rarity, after the poll debacle. He looked both surprised and awed at the failure of his election strategies. He mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his bete noire N Chandrababu Naidu as ‘great people’, who ganged up against him.
But then, Jagan was no Mark Antony; he was not Julius Caesar either. Instead, he became lonely in his camp office-cum-residence at Tadepalle. It was the same place where obedient leaders, including state ministers, waited for hours to get an audience with him, and sang paeans glorifying their supreme leader.
From the confines of his Tadepalle palace, Jagan could see the TDP leaders, now jingoistic, basking in glory. He knew buildings would soon come up in Amaravati, Naidu’s preferred state capital. He realised his three-capital formula — and his promise that he would rule the state from Visakhapatnam — had fallen flat.
Jagan now seems to have lost his nerve. His dharna in Delhi, despite several national leaders pledging solidarity, against political violence, does not seem to have impressed the people that matter most — the voters in Andhra Pradesh.
He demanded the restoration of Z-plus category security, which he enjoyed while being the chief minister. He moved the court seeking the Opposition leader status, which would automatically provide him with more security.
With the depressing conditions in Andhra Pradesh, Jagan seems to be finding solace in Bengaluru, where he owns an estate at Yelahanka. He has visited Yelahanka at least four times ever since the poll result was announced.
Speculations, mostly outlandish, were rife that these visits were part of Jagan’s move to get closer to the Congress. It was also speculated that he would merge the YSRCP with the Congress. Those who matter in the Congress in Karnataka, especially DK Sivakumar, tossed such a spiel into the dumpster.
A plausible speculation for Jagan frequenting Yelahanka is that he cannot bear the sight of the TDP leaders having the last laugh in the Velagapudi secretariat. Also, the brisk development of Amaravati around his Tadepalli palace appears to have become a repulsive sight. Another possibility is that he is contemplating his next move.
The picture of his trusted leaders, who lived off his generosity, showing “yellow fever” symptoms and getting closer to TDP, too, might have become loathsome to him. Jagan may return and stay put in Tadepalli regularly, but not until he gets used to living with the present.
Until then, he is likely to oscillate between Tadepalli and Yelahanka, where the roar of fighter jets taking off from and landing at the nearby Air Force station might remind him of the boisterous crowds that thronged his poll campaign meetings — and the result!
(Edited by Majnu Babu)
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