Historically, the Nellore district is a Reddy-dominant political area and in the past Congress used to rule this area without any worries. Especially in Nellore rural, there has been no importance to the Telugu Desham Party even though they came to ruling twice in the past two decades.
It is Aanam Ramanarayana Reddy who has been the MLA of Nellore Rural (Old Rapur previously) from the TDP and it is said to be because of his caste favoritism and after the state partition, he jumped into the YSRCP. Later Jagan recognized the importance of Aanam and gave him another constituency. Kotam Reddy Sridhar Reddy made sure the trend continues and won in 2014, 2019 elections with YSRCP ticket.
On the other side, the Telugu Desham party was clueless all these years to find a plan about getting a stronghold in this region. In this constituency, the TDP is in the dilemma of finding a new leader for every election. From time to time the candidate contesting on behalf of the TDP / that party allies’ in this constituency has shown a lot of tendency to get deposits.
In 2009, the TDP gave the ticket to the Communists as part of an alliance, while the Communists slipped to third place as Praja Rajyam Party was in second place. In the 2014 elections too, YSRCP candidate Kotamreddy won without any worries. Finally, Chandrababu found a powerful leader to checkmate the YSRCP’s leader Kotam Reddy Sridhar Reddy.
In the last elections, mayor Abdul Aziz, who was in the YSRCP, jumped into the TDP on CBN’s call. In that crucial contest, Aziz gave a moderate competition to Kotamreddy though he was given the ticket at the last minute. 64948 votes were cast in Aziz’s favour which was a record for the TDP and gave a new ray of hope to them. Though Aziz lost with 22 thousand votes, TDP started to believe that they can gain the top spot in the next elections.
Coming to the recent circumstances in the Nellore Rural, Kotam Reddy has garnered too much negativity these days. He was involved in an ‘NTR statue war’ in Kavali and failed to develop the rural areas of Nellore, though his supremo enjoys power in the state. On the other side, Aziz is gaining huge favoritism from the people in rural areas and Babu believes that he already did checkmate to the Kotam Reddy who still thinks that he is invincible in Nellore.