Visakhapatnam: Srikakulam Lok Sabha is witnessing a tough fight between sitting MP Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu and YSRC’s Pedada Tilak.
Ram Mohan Naidu has won the parliamentary seat twice from this constituency. He is making all-out efforts to make it a hat-trick.
“I will overturn Ram Mohan’s applecart in the 2024 election,” asserts the ruling party candidate Pedada Tilak.
Tilak sought to explain to the media recently that Ram Mohan had never been a mass leader. He won the 2014 Srikakulam LS election in a sympathy wave after the sudden death of his father Kinjarapu Yerran Naidu, former union minister and Telugu Desam Party heavyweight. At that time, Tilak said, there had also been a craze among people to see Narendra Modi as the prime minister, which helped the NDA alliance win the Srikakulam parliament seat with a majority of over one lakh votes, defeating Reddy Shanti of YSRC.
The YSRC candidate pointed out that in 2019, Ram Mohan Naidu won the LS constituency with a slender majority of 6,000 votes. This was after Telugu Desam rigged polling in 16 booths, followed by a mess-up in the counting of postal votes.
Tilak maintained that the sitting MP has never addressed peoples’ problems. In particular, he had been a big failure during the Covid pandemic, which led to several deaths.
The ruling party candidate maintained that since then, the YSRC government has rescued kidney patients by building a super special hospital in Palasa and bringing drinking water from Hiramandalam to Uddanam. The government is further developing the Mulapeta Sea Port, a fishing harbour, and several fish-landing centres to prevent migration of unemployed youth from the region.
Tilak feels these deeds of the state government will enable him to win the Srikakulam Lok Sabha seat, defeating Ram Mohan Naidu, who has neglected the constituency.
On the other hand, Ram Mohan Naidu expressed confidence that he will win the Srikakulam parliamentary constituency for the third consecutive time. He maintained
that the three-party alliance and failure of the YSRC government will help him secure a huge majority.
The TD candidate contended that people appreciate him for developing railway stations and laying the Pathapatnam-Narasannapeta road, which has since been converted into a National Highway.
Former central minister Killi Kruparani, who joined the Congress recently, has been given the party ticket to contest from the Srikakulam LS seat. She defeated Yerran Naidu in 2009 and became the Union minister.
Total Votes: 16,27,024
Male: 8,04,721
Female: 8,22,187
Third gender: 116
