Click here to register for an invitation to the Bangalore DevCamp

YSR Congress Party

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

YSR Congress Party వై యస్ ఆర్ కాంగ్రెస్ పార్టీ
Leader	Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy
Chairperson	Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy
Leader in Lok Sabha	Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy
Headquarters	Jubilee Hills Road No 45 Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh India
Newspaper	Mahanetha, Prajanetha, The Leader Jagan
Student wing	YSR Congress Student Wing
Youth wing	YSR Congress Youth Wing
Women's wing	YSR Congress Mahila Wing
Labour wing	YSR Congress Trade Union
Official colours	Blue, white, Orange and green
Seats in Lok Sabha	2 / 545
Seats in Rajya Sabha	0 / 245
Seats in Legislative Assembly	17 / 295
Election symbol

Party flag

Politics of India Political parties Elections

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]