Hyderabad, June 7: Jagan Mohan Reddy's sister, Sharmila has now taken political centre stage in Andhra Pradesh after the YSR Congress chief put behind bars by the CBI.
Sharmila, whose speech and style are already drawing comparisons with her late father, is sweating it out on the campaign trail alongside her mother Vijayamma, playing the sympathy card and accusing Congress of witch hunting her family.
"They've sent Jagan behind bars. Why have they done that?" Sharmila said
The by-polls in 18 assembly seats and one Lok Sabha seat are being touted as a litmus test for the YSR Congress party. With less than a week left for the by-polls, the race for a win is heating up. Political stakes are high and it's no surprise that the Congress has called in star power Chiranjeevi and Ghulam Nabi Azad to campaign alongside the Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy. All of them defending CBI's move to arrest Jagan as apolitical.
"Even if Jagan was in Congress. he would have been prosecuted. These are his own misdeeds not Congress's," Azad said.
With Jagan behind bars, his sister Sharmila Reddy has emerged as the surprise campaigner for the YSR congress party. While she is succeeding in pulling crowds, party supporters are concerned whether or not she will be able to translate these large numbers on ground into votes.
Meanwhile, the election officials have seized a record Rs 32 crore in cash and Rs 9 crore worth valuables ahead of the by-polls on June 12. The muscle and money power, an indication perhaps, of the desperate political situation in Andhra Pradesh.
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