Why Jagan Ally With His Father’s Enemy?

AP chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s gift – a Rajya Sabha membership to Parimal Nathwani, the face of Reliance Group is little surprising.

It was pretty much expected when the Mukesh Ambani, chairman Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) personally escorted the aspirant and his friend Natwal to Reddy’s residence in Amaravati in the last week of February for a closed-door meeting.

Elections are scheduled all over the nation on March 26 for 57 seats in the Upper House, including 4 from Andhra Pradesh. Chandrababu’s TDP, with 21 seats in the 175-member state assembly, has fielded a Scheduled Caste candidate while Reddy with 151 seats has staked a claim for all the 4 seats.

It’s a sure win for Jagan’s party given his numerical strength.

The candidate Alla Ayodya Rami Reddy, is the founder of Ramky Infrastructure Limited with a presence in design-build-own-operate projects, real estate and infrastructure. Nathwani, a 2-time RajyaSabha member from Jharkhand, is aspiring to go to the Upper House for the third time from Andhra Pradesh on a YSRCP ticket.

Two of the four YSRCP candidates - Pilli Subhash Chandra Bose and Mopidevi Venkata Ramana, ministers in his cabinet from the backward classes (BC) – are loyal to the YSR family. The two ministers lost their membership in the legislative council after the government’s decision to abolish it.

YSR’s battle with Ambani group

What is surprising is Reddy’s decision to select a candidate from the very corporate powerhouse that his father late Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy had waged a spirited battle against.

At a time when his own Congress-led UPA government at the Centre and the opposition NDA maintained silence on the tussle between Mukesh Ambani's RIL and his brother Anil’s Reliance Natural Resources Limited (RNRL) over the exploration of natural gas and oil in the KG (Krishna Godavari) basin, Rajasekhar Reddy raised his voice, defending the role of the government in settling the dispute.

When the Ambani brothers left the dispute resolution to their mother Kokila Ben, YSR shot off a letter to the then PM Manmohan Singh, saying “Gas is a natural resource, a property of the nation, not of a private company.”

YSR, as the chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, demanded allocation of 10% of gas explored by the Reliance group at a preferential price for his home state.

YSR’s war with the Ambani-led RIL was visibly public. The state government headed by him had even set up the Andhra Pradesh Gas Infrastructure Corporation to bid for the NELP (new exploration licensing policy) blocks in the KG basin in competition with the Reliance group. However, he could not take his anti-Reliance crusade forward due to his untimely death in a chopper crash in the Nallamala forests in 2009. Jagan Reddy’s followers subsequently vandalised Reliance showrooms, filling stations across the state, suspecting a conspiracy allegedly hatched by Mukesh Ambani in the killing of YSR.

Jagan Reddy, leading his party’s election campaign last year, promised to follow his father’s legacy as his heir apparent. But his decision favouring Reliance group’s Nathwani is not in tandem with the ideals of the late YSR, commented an analyst Ch.V.M. Krishna Rao.

Why Jagan compromise with his father’s enemy?

Political expediency evidently took precedence over the legacy of Jagan’s father when it came to the selection of Nathwani for the Rajya Sabha ticket.

Soon after his candidature was announced by the YSRC spokesperson Ummareddy Venkateswarlu, Nathwani took to Twitter to express his gratitude to CM Jagan Reddy. Interestingly, the tweet also tagged PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, indicating the fact that he had been handpicked by Reddy for the RajyaSabha at the behest of the top guns in the NDA.

The NDA considers Jagan to be a friend in need and his YSRC continues to aid in the passage of most key bills in the RajyaSabha when the NDA falls short of required strength. The tag sparked a debate about which party Nathwani belonged to – YSRC or BJP.

In addition, Reddy needs cooperation from the Centre in executing his government’s agenda which includes distributive capitals, abolition of Andhra Pradesh’s legislative council and containing his arch-rival Naidu, analysts feel. A YSRC leader, on the condition of anonymity, said that the gesture favouring Nathwani for the Rajya Sabha ticket would surely help Jagan recast his image as a pro-industry leader after the confusion ensued about the plans by Kia Motors to move its plant away from Andhra Pradesh.

For Ambani, it’s shooting two birds with one shot—sending his confidante to the Rajya Sabha and finding a friend in CM Jagan, who heads a state where Ambani’s Reliance group has heavy business stakes which faced uncertainty after his relations with YSR were strained. The group obviously could not work alongside the Jagan Reddy government, due to the state’s reservation policy asking private industry players to mandatorily employ 75% of the workforce from his home state.

Naidu’s game

Knowing, with a level of certitude, that his party could not win any of the 4 seats with its insufficient strength in the assembly, TDP’s Naidu wisely fielded a candidate that would keep his flock together. The TDP won 23 seats but at least 3 of its members pledged allegiance to YSRC. With its strength having plummeted to 20, the TDP is unlikely to win any seat.

Any candidate requires not less than 41 MLAs to get elected to the Rajya Sabha. The TDP aims to fix its defectors and press for their disqualification if they indulge in cross-voting in violation of the whip. But the Jagan’s party doesn’t require MLAs from the opposition camp since it can win all the four seats with its existing strength.