Andhra’s New Lady Love

With Jagan in jail, his sister Sharmila takes the state by storm as the Congress and TDP try obscuring YSR’s legacy

ANANTAPUR ~  She is 34, fresh to politics, an evangelist’s wife, and a mother of two. Till last week, she was comfortable in the background, managing her family and businesses. Now she has hit Andhra’s roads with a vengeance, along with her mother, to campaign for the YSR Congress, a Congress breakaway party. To canvass votes for upcoming bypolls in the state, Sharmila Reddy has stepped in for her elder brother, YS Jaganmohan Reddy, who was arrested on 27 May in a disproportionate assets case currently being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Sharmila’s roadshow has already revived the morale of YSR Congress cadres who were dismayed to see their top leader put behind bars so abruptly, and they reckon there may be a wave of popular sympathy to arouse. “Nenu Rajanna koothurni, Jagananna chellelni, na peru Sharmila,” she says at every stop, introducing herself as Sharmila, YS Rajasekhar Reddy’s daughter and Jagan’s younger sister. Despite the sweltering heat—it has been an especially hot summer in Andhra Pradesh—her appearance draws large crowds. They are eager to hear what she has to say. And she plays the victimhood card to the hilt, her speech packed with lines that suggest political schooling. “My brother is innocent and new to politics,” she says in her Rayalaseema-accented Telugu, “He wanted to take on my father’s mantle and serve the poor and deserving. They can arrest him, but they cannot arrest your love for him.” The crowds swell.

The YSR Congress, which precipitated these bypolls after 17 Congress MLAs resigned and decided to recontest on YSR party tickets, is gaining confidence by the minute, it would appear. Sharmila seems to have adopted the famous ‘angry young man’ stance of her late father and former Andhra CM, YSR. The difference is that while YSR, whose life was claimed by a helicopter crash in September 2009, had used his sway with the masses in Sonia Gandhi’s favour back in 2004 and mid-2009—enabling the Congress to win 29 and 32 Lok Sabha seats in the state in those two general elections—the family’s current fight is against the grand old party, with which the family is peeved for denying Jagan chief ministership. “It’s high time we bring back Rajanna’s rajyam (YSR rule) by making Jagananna Chief Minister,” Sharmila says in Anantapur.

Polls for 18 Assembly seats and one Lok Sabha constituency are due on 12 June. If the YSR Congress wins even a few of them, the breakaway party will have the numbers to overthrow the Congress government in the state. This is what the call for ‘Jagan as CM’ is all about.

Voters in Anantapur have watched her performance on TV over the past few days, and so seeing her live is a privilege. As her roadshow approaches, they get into vantage positions for a glimpse. “I wanted to see her in person. She is such a darling,” says Sharadamma, a 60-something grandmother who eggs on her granddaughters to buy malle poovu (jasmine) flowers, available at Rs 10 per packet, to shower on the entourage. Such robust demand leaves pushcart vendor Kalimuddin bemused. “I have never sold so many packets in the mid afternoon,” he says.

Dressed in a long-sleeved salwar suit, Sharmila is proving quite the charmer—even being warmly described as Andhra’s Priyanka, a reference to the Gandhi who campaigns for her elder brother Rahul and accompanies her mother Sonia. It’s just that the Gandhi family happens to be the primary target of Sharmila’s anger. “We know that Sonia was the one who unleashed the CBI on my brother,” Sharmila says, speaking of a betrayal by India’s first family of politics. “Is this the price my family has to pay for decades’ long loyalty to the party and its leader?” asks Vijayalakshmi, the mother. On cue, a musical band accompanying the roadshow breaks into ‘English bomma’ a ditty that caricatures Sonia as an English ‘doll’.

Sharmila herself is married to Brother Anil Kumar, an evangelist who, like the rest of the YSR clan, has not been free of controversy. He has been accused of misusing the YSR government machinery and projecting himself as an alternative to a popular televangelist, KA Paul. According to Congress parliamentarian V Hanumantha Rao, YSR himself had had no qualms playing the politics of religion, since he would often use his son-in-law’s pulpit, so to speak, to attract Dalit converts to Christianity. The family also stands accused of corruption and nepotism. During the former chief minister’s tenure, Anil Kumar’s businesses were granted huge tracts of iron-ore mining land, allotments that were later cancelled by the current government headed by Kiran Kumar Reddy.

Jagan’s arrest, however, has overshadowed all those charges. Sharmila and her mother Vijayalaksmi are averaging two-three constituencies a day across the state, from the faraway coastal areas to their home territory of Rayalaseema.

The response to their roadshow is giving not just the Congress nightmares but also the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which was the main alternative to the Congress so far.

Back in Anantapur after touring East and West Godavari districts, where Jagan had held his odarpu (thanksgiving) yatra more than a year ago, Sharmila announces: “My brother will solve all your problems, just as my father did, and offer all YSR welfare programmes that have been shelved or diluted by the Congress government.”

The bypoll campaign has seen two more Congress MLAs switch allegiance to the YSR breakaway, with the grand old party sounding plain exasperated. In response to the latest defections, Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Central minister who is in charge of Andhra Pradesh, had this to say: “The wrongdoings of Jagan is the collective responsibility of all in the [former] YSR cabinet. The YSR family is behaving like maharajas and demanding that the son succeed the father. Can it happen in these modern days?” Azad committed another gaffe recently by telling an audience that had Jagan stayed with the Congress, he could have become a minister at the Centre, or maybe even CM someday. He clarified later that his listeners had understood the Urdu nuance of what he had actually said, and that he’d been misinterpreted by reporters unfamiliar with the language.

Actor-politician Chiranjeevi, whose Praja Rajyam Party has merged with the Congress, is of the opinion that YSR is to blame for Jagan’s “misdeeds”—which, he adds, have badly damaged the Congress’ credibility in the state. This may be an explanation for why his newly adopted party is finding the going so tough even in the Tirupati Assembly constituency, which, vacated by Chiranjeevi, was once indisputably under his sway.

On her part, Sharmila rips into Chiranjeevi’s remarks and asks why the actor was silent on the issue of Rs 83 crore in cash found at his elder daughter’s house during an income tax raid. “They later said it was actually Rs 35 crore,” she says, “They had that much money in their house neatly packed in cardboard cartons. Have you ever heard of anyone keeping so much within four walls?”

The Election Commission, meanwhile, has come up with a startling disclosure about the money in play. In value, the total cash and gold seized during this bypoll campaign so far (Rs 41 crore a week before polling) exceeds the sum during 2009’s general and state elections (Rs 38 crore in all).

Meanwhile, Jagan, under remand till 11 June, remains lodged at Hyderabad’s Chanchalguda Central Prison. The EC has reminded all poll contenders that Jagan is still an undertrial and should not be referred to as a convict in any manner during electioneering. Not that anyone is listening. An arrest of a potential CM is a dramatic event, and it is the focal issue of the bypolls—for Jagan’s own party as much as his rivals. 

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Anil Budur Lulla