A team of TDP leaders from Nellore district, led by Polit Bureau member Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy and former Minister P. Narayana, on Thursday called on Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy, who recently resigned as Rajya Sabha member and quit the YSRCP as well, and invited him into the party.
The TDP leaders offered Mr. Prabhakar Reddy a bouquet, and welcomed his decision to leave the ruling party in the face of an “assault” on his self-respect.
Mr. Prabhakar Reddy reportedly agreed in principle to join the TDP and expressed his willingness to contest for the Nellore Lok Sabha seat.
Sources in the TDP told The Hindu that the party leadership, given Mr. Prabhakar Reddy’s clean image as a social worker and industrialist, agreed to field him from the desired constituency.
The undivided Nellore district had given an overwhelming support to the YSRCP in the 2019 elections by electing all the 10 party candidates to the Legislative Assembly.
As three MLAs — Anam Ramanarayana Reddy (Venkatagiri), Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy (Nellore Rural) and Mekapati Chandrasekhar Reddy (Udayagiri) — had already quit the YSRCP and joined the TDP, the party leaders were elated over the likelihood of winning all the 10 seats, especially with the support of Mr. Prabhakar Reddy.
Speaking to the media later, Mr. Narayana expressed confidence that the party would wrest all the 10 Assembly seats from the YSRCP, buoyed by the public response to the ongoing political developments in the district.
Mr. Narayana, who is all set to be officially announced as the candidate for Nellore City constituency, announced that he would cover all the 94,000 households in the constituency. Mr. Narayana recalled that he had already covered enough ground by reaching out to the people and offering to solve the issues that remained unaddressed for the last five years.
