Visakhapatnam East Assembly constituency, which came into existence after the delimitation exercise undertaken in he united Andhra Pradesh in 2009, is all set to witness a multi-cornered contest this election season.
Velagapudi Ramakrishna Babu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), who won the last two elections, is eyeing a hat-trick from here, while the other political parties are yet to announce their candidates. However, YSRCP leader Vamsi Krishna Srinivas, who contested unsuccessfully in 2009 and 2014, has begun campaigning in right earnest.
He had contested on the the ticket of erstwhile Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) in 2009 and lost to his TDP rival by a narrow margin. In 2014, he contested on the YSRCP ticket and was defeated by the TDP nominee again with a majority of over 47,000 votes.
Mr. Vamsi Krishna Srinivas started a door-to-door campaign in the segment. He went round Sivajipalem on Thursday and appealed to the voters to give him a chance this time. Jana Sena Party and the Congress are yet to announce their nominees. Golagani Ashok, Bolisetti Satyanarayana and Raghava Rao are said to be front-runners for the ticket. While Mr. Ashok belongs to Yadava community, the other two are Kapus. Mr. Ashok is likely to be chosen by the party in view of the dominance of the Yadavas in this segment.
Voter count
The Assembly segment has 2,02,447 voters in 2009 which went up to 2,56,776 in the 2014 elections. The number of male voters was 1,29,651 and female voters was 1,27,118. A third gender under the head ‘others’ was added in 2014 and seven voters have registered under it.
Yadava stronghold
This constituency is said to be dominated by the ‘Yadava’ community, which has 22,810 voters, followed by the Reddys (21,260), Vada Balijas (12,450) and Kapus (10, 940).
The sitting MLA Ramakrishna Babu, who belongs to the Kamma community, is confident of getting re-elected.
Campaigning by the other candidates is expected to pick up in the next few days.