YSR Congress Party (
Telugu:
వై యస్ ఆర్ కాంగ్రెస్ పార్టీ) or
Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (lit. Youth, Labour and Peasant Congress Party) is a
regional political party in the state of
Andhra Pradesh,
India. It was founded by Shiva Kumar in 2009 and taken over by
Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy, the son of former
Andhra Pradesh chief minister late
YS Rajasekhara Reddy (popularly known as
YSR) in 2011
[1]. Both
YSR and Jaganmohan Reddy (fondly called Jagan by his followers) had been members of the
Indian National Congress.
[2] Jagan was also elected as the national president of the party.
[3]
Background
After the death of the then-incumbent Chief Minister YSR in a helicopter crash in September 2009
[4], his son Jaganmohan Reddy, the incumbent
MP from
Kadapa, started an
Odarpu Yatra
(condolence tour) across Andhra Pradesh to console the families of
those who had committed suicide or died of shock after the death of his
father. This was however not supported by the Congress leadership, for
the fear of Jagan establishing himself as a popular leader in the mold
of the great YSR and also for the fear of the stability of the
government now led by senior Congress leader and then finance minister
Konijeti Rosaiah[5]. But Congress President
Sonia Gandhi claimed the rising volatile situation in the state regarding the
Telangana
issue as the main reason for opposing the "Odarpu Yatra". Defying the
Congress High Command's order to call off the tour, Jagan went ahead
with the first leg of the "Odarpu Yatra" in the
West Godavari and
Khammam districts from in April 2010
[6]. His yatras proved to be extremely popular, drawing large number of people to his meetings. In between, the Jagan-promoted
Sakshi TV news channel and
Sakshi newspaper, had been continuously criticizing Rosaiah and the Congress leadership at
New Delhi. In a special programme on Sakshi TV to mark the 125
th anniversary celebrations of the Congress party, a voice-over made remarks on Sonia Gandhi and the
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
on the "current state of affairs" in the State, which invited anger and
protests from the Congress and increased the gap and friction between
Jagan and the Congress.
[7]
The channel later deleted those remarks in a re-telecast. After
accusing the Congress of ill-treating him and creating rifts in his
family by luring his uncle
YS Vivekananda Reddy (younger brother of YSR) with a state ministerial berth in the aftermath of the death of his father, Jagan and his mother
Y. S. Vijaya Lakshmi resigned from the Kadapa
Lok Sabha and
Pulivendula Assembly constituencies respectively and also as members of the Congress in November 2010
[8].
They took over the leadership of an existing YSR Congress Party in
March 2011, which was founded by Shiva Kumar, a Telangana-based advocate
and a fan of YSR, in 2009
[1][9].
Many Congress leaders loyal to Jagan also quit the Congress and joined
the YSR Congress. This resulted in the weakening of the Congress's
strength in both the assembly and the Lok Sabha, necessiating
by-elections. In the ensuing bi-elections, the party won most of the
vacated seats with record breaking majorities, with many of the Congress
and the
Telugu Desam Party (the main opposition) candidates losing their deposits.
[10] The party currently has a strength of 17 members in the 295-member state assembly and 2 members in the Lok Sabha.
Electoral performance
In March of 2012, YSR Congress won the
Kovur assembly seat in
Nellore district in a by-election.
On 15 June, 2012, YSR Congress
won the
Nellore Lok Sabha seat by a record majority for the seat(about 3 lakhs) and 15 of 18 assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh. YSR Congress leaders
P. Subhash Chandra Bose and
Konda Surekha,
both ministers in the YSR cabinet, had switched to YSR Congress party
but lost their races, mainly due to opposition TDP colluding with the
ruling Congress Party. Prominent winners from YSRCP included
Balineni Sreenivas Reddy, a relative of YSR family who was also a minister in the YSR cabinet,
Gurunath Reddy,
Chenna Keshav Reddy,
Gadikota Srikanth Reddy and
Dharmana Krishna Das (elder brother of Congress state minister
Dharmana Prasada Rao).
[11]
References
External links
