The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to contest from 11 Assembly constituencies instead of ten as decided earlier. The latest one on the BJP’s list of Assembly constituencies will be Rajamahendravaram (Rural).
As part of the seat-sharing agreement by National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners in the State, it was decided that ten Assembly and six Lok Sabha seats would be allocated to the BJP, while the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Jana Sena Party (JSP) would contest from remaining seats.
According to party sources, BJP national executive member and former BJP State president Somu Veerraju will be in the fray from Rajamahendravaram (Rural). The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which is one of the alliance partners of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the State, has agreed to spare the seat for BJP, and the sitting TDP MLA Gorantla Butchaiah Chowdary has to forego his constituency.
The BJP will contest from the Araku Assembly constituency instead of Paderu. BJP named Pangi Raja Rao as its candidate. Vishnu Kumar Raju will contest from the Visakhapatnam (North) Assembly constituency, from where he won the 2014 elections. Either Kamineni Srinivas or Garapati Sitaramanjaneya Chowdary (Tapaana Chowdary) will contest from Kaikaluru Assembly constituency.
Y. Satya Kumar will contest from Dharmavaram, while C. Adinarayana Reddy will contest from Jammalamadugu. Raju will contest from Anaparthi. Similarly, N. Eswar Rao will contest from Etcherla, while Parthasarathy will contest from Adoni. Meanwhile, Jyothi or P. Suresh will contest from Budwel.
The Vijayawada (West) Assembly, which hitherto the Jana Sena Party (JSP) is claiming, will go to the BJP with the entry of former Rajya Sabha member Y. Satyanarayana (Sujana) Chowdary. The JSP leader Pothina Mahesh even went on to assert that he would contest from Vijayawada (West) Assembly constituency with a photo of JSP president Pawan Kalyan, even if the constituency was not allocated to the JSP, as part of the seat-sharing among the BJP-TDP-JSP.
