Congress, TDP overdid vilification of Jagan, YSR

TIRUPATI: “What has gone wrong and where?” leaders of the ruling party and the main opposition party seem to be asking themselves while licking the wounds of the crushing defeat inflicted on them by Jagan's YSR Congress party in the Kadapa and Pulivendula by-elections.
Both Congress and TDP had trained their big guns on the young Jagan, launched a broadside and used every means to project him as a ‘corrupt person'. All that backfired on them.Was it due to the overzealous and slanderous campaign against Jagan and YS Rajasekhara Reddy? It seems so, if the street talk is anything to go by. Speaking ill of YSR on his home turf by the leaders of both parties, one directly and the other subtly, proved costly for the party stalwarts who suffered a ‘humiliating' defeat at the hands of a person who is hardly two years old in politics.When this correspondent visited the Pulivendula and Mydukur Assembly segments on the eve of the polling day and on the polling day, the people seemed decisive.In some villages they were out and out for Jagan and the results show their determination.In some villages, people were annoyed by the treatment meted out to Jagan by the Congress and in some others people wondered why the Congress and the TDP leaders brought in so many leaders to sling mud on Jagan and YSR. “They had never bothered to show up in Kadapa before. Why now? Why isolate and har a s s a f a t h e r l e s s child?”asked an elderly voter in Vempalle who could not suppress his anger.Congress leaders painted Jagan as power-hungry and, at the same time, tried to claim the legacy of YSR.Though TDP candidate MV Mysoora Reddy kept a low profile, it did not help him as his party leaders spent all their energies on tarnishing YSR's image rather than on promoting their own candidate.Neither the twirling of mustache nor slapping of the thigh in Pulivendula worked for the TDP. On the other hand, they lost more than 60 percent of their traditional vote-bank.