Jana Sena Party leader Pawan Kalyan’s sudden and hushed-up visit to Tirupati late on Friday evening is believed to be a fire-fighting mission to set things right, even as the alliance candidate Arani Srinivasulu is apparently struggling to break the ice with the party cadre.
The Chittoor MLA, Mr. Srinivasulu, left no stone unturned to prove that he is not a ‘non-local’ in Tirupati as the ruling party is projecting. However, he evidently has been quite unsuccessful in reaching out to his own party in Tirupati, let alone the leaders of the alliance partners.
After the prestigious Tirupati Assembly seat was given away to JSP as part of the seat-sharing agreement, the party found it an uphill task to identify a suitable local candidate and had to invariably choose Mr. Srinivasulu, who was initially labelled as ‘a non-local, non-party candidate’.
Things appeared to fall in place, but key local aspirants such as former MLA M. Sugunamma and J.B. Srinivas (both TDP) and K. Kiran Rayal (JSP) firmly held their ground and showed signs of non-cooperation in the party campaign.
With the signs of dissent getting deeper, indicating that all is not well within the alliance, Mr. Pawan Kalyan rushed to Tirupati on Friday evening to set things right.
At a closed-door meeting with leaders of the alliance partners, he stressed the importance of winning the seat ‘come what may’ to prove a point to the ruling party and sought the cooperation of every leader and party worker. It is learnt that he had assured due recognition to the party leaders after the change of guard in the state.
