All eyes on Tirupati Lok Sabha bypoll

Tirupati:  The forthcoming Tirupati Lok Sabha by-election will be one of the most watched elections in Andhra Pradesh as well as beyond over the next one month.
The Parliamentary constituency reserved for the Scheduled Castes fell vacant after the sitting Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) MP Balli Durga Prasad succumbed to coronavirus in September 2020.
It has been vacant for almost six months and only recently the Election Commission of India (ECI) scheduled the election on April 17.
Many times in the southern state when a legislator dies in an untimely manner, one of his immediate family members is given the ticket and it is also customary for all political parties to make that person’s victory a formality by allowing it to go uncontested and unanimous.
However, in this case, YSRCP founder and Andhra Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy did not choose to take that route and accommodated Prasad’s son, Balli Kalyan Chakravarthy, as an MLC under the MLA quota recently.
It is also not sure if the political rivals would have allowed the seat to go unanimously respecting tradition even if he had chosen any Prasad’s family member, given the bitter, vitiated and religious political environment prevalent in the state now.