Vijayawada: The ruling YSR Congress’ remarkable performance in the civic polls on Sunday is more significant than the party sweeping the 2019 Assembly elections with 151 seats.
If the 2019 victory was a mandate born out of expectations and an experiment by the electorate, Sunday’s vote is a loud and clear endorsement of Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s leadership and the major decisions he took in the last year-and-a-half including the decentralisation of governance by setting up three capitals.
The ruling party won the Vijayawada and Guntur corporations from where the CM wanted to shift the illusionary Amaravati capital of then Chief Minister N. Chandrabau Naidu to Visakhapatnam where, too, the YSRC invaded the otherwise strong fortress of the TD.
The outcome punctured Opposition leader N. Chandrababu Naidu’s challenge to the Chief Minister to dissolve the Assembly and seek a fresh mandate from the people before implementing the three-capital formula….