Hyderabad : Every general election since 2004 has been seeing the foray of one or two new parties into the political battlefield in Andhra Pradesh. If it was Telangana Rashtra Samiti in 2004 and Praja Rajyam Party in 2009, it would be Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress (YSRC) in 2014.
Adding to this now will be the yet-to-be-named political party being launched by former Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy.
It's essentially an individual's ambition to ascend the high seat of power in the state that gave birth to these parties though the grounds publicly stated were different.
TRS started off as a “movement” in 2001 for securing statehood to Telangana and jumped into the electoral fray in 2004 as a means to achieve its goal. The outfit was limited only to a particular region in the state and its political graph had mostly been uneven in the last few years.
Now, with Telangana state becoming a reality, the TRS has transformed into a full-fledged political party and hopes to see its fortunes surge.
‘Megastar' of Telugu films K Chiranjeevi launched his political party PRP in 2008 with the promise of ushering in a ‘change' in the system as an alternative to the two major political forces in the state - Congress and TDP. The PRP could not achieve what it wanted - power in the state but surely ended up playing a ‘spoilsport' to the fortunes of TDP.
In less than four years, the PRP became extinct in 2012 by merging with the ruling Congress. The 2009 election also saw another new player in Lok Satta Party of bureaucrat-turned-politician N Jayaprakash Narayan but it ended up as a ‘one-seat wonder' with only its founder tasting electoral success.
Lok Satta, however, is not a mainstream political party in that sense and has emerged on the scene basically with a reformist agenda.
The YSRC took birth three years ago when the ambitious son of former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, was “denied” the opportunity to succeed his father following the former's tragic death in a helicopter crash.
