: Prez poll: Pressure on Jagan to get AP special category status for backing NDA #IndiaNEWS #Andhra Pradesh Hyderabad: With less than a month to go for the Presidential election, all eyes are not just

Prez poll: Pressure on Jagan to get AP special category status for backing NDA #IndiaNEWS #Andhra Pradesh
Hyderabad: With less than a month to go for the Presidential election, all eyes are not just on the candidate BJP-led NDA will name but also on the stand to be taken by Andhra Pradeshs ruling YSR Congress Party.
As the NDA is short of majority in the electoral college, it will expect the YSRCP and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) to bail it out.
Though the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led party is yet to drop hints on the strategy it is going to adopt, going by the stand it took during the last three years it is unlikely to go against Narendra Modi governments choice.
Political observers say while Jagan Mohan Reddy may not like to strain relations with the BJP-led alliance, this time he will be under intense pressure at home. With just two years to go for Assembly polls, he is likely to face the heat from the opposition parties if he extends support to the NDA candidate without bargaining for Special Category Status (SCS) to the state and other commitments made by the Centre in Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.
The opposition parties have already started throwing challenges at Jagan Reddy to make the Modi government grant SCS and agree to other long-pending demands of the state in return for YSRCPs support to the NDA candidate.
If YSRCP extends support without any preconditions, this may make Jagan Reddy more vulnerable to attacks by the opposition for compromising with the Centre to save himself in disproportionate assets cases pending against him. Though these are not the new allegations, the opposition may look to aggressively capitalise on them in the run up to 2023 elections.
Some analysts believe that Jagan Reddy may keep everyone guessing about his partys stand till the last minute and depending on the candidate to be named by the NDA, he may cite some strong grounds to justify his stand to support BJPs choice.
Jagan is in no hurry to decide on which side he would tilt. He has the option to wait till the last minute, and look for the candidate both BJP and the opposition will field. Unless opposition comes together and fields a widely acceptable name, there is no compulsion on Jagan to decide whom his party would support, says political analyst P. Raghavendra Reddy.
Since there are speculations that the BJP might field a South Indian or a woman or a tribal as the Presidential candidate, in such a case, the YSRCP can choose to support them citing nativity or moral high ground as the factor.
Even otherwise, unless opposition unites across the country, Jagan can argue that there should not be any elections for Constitutional positions, and hence he would support BJPs nominee, he said.
As BJP-led NDA appears to be trailing behind the opposition by about two per cent votes, it will pin its hopes on YSRCP and BJD which always came to the rescue of the Modi government whenever it needed the support from outside the NDA to pass crucial bills in the Parliament.

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