Factional politics in Palnadu has always presented an interesting phenomenon. Whenever one party comes to power in Andhra Pradesh, supporters of the opposition party often flee their villages under pressure from leaders and cadres of the ruling party.
For the past five years, leaders of the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), such as Pinneri Ramakrishna Reddy from Machera and Kasu Mahesh Reddy from Gurajala, have dominated Palnadu region, resulting in TDP supporters and voters having to abandon their villages and take refuge elsewhere.
Now that the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and its allies have come to power in Andhra Pradesh, it is now the turn of the YSR Congress to flee villages fearing threats from TDP workers.
Reports said that hundreds of families from Palnadu area, who had supported the YSRCP in the last five years, have fled their villages and taken refuge in other districts.
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Sources said that in the last month alone, 1,500 families have left their villages and migrated to Hyderabad, where they are now eking out a living.
They are unlikely to return to their villages over the next five years due to the risk of sectarian violence.
Several villages in Palnadu district are divided on political lines. Villages like Palwaigate and Tumurkota are divided while villages like Arigopura, Bogira Veedu, Vyapacampalli and Chintapalli are dominated by the TDP.
Conversely, villages like Kandrakunta, KP Gudem, Rentala, Lakshmi Devipuram and Reddypalle are YSRCP strongholds, where people have not gone to vote for decades as party workers have occupied polling booths and rigged votes.
Palnadu has a unique kind of factionalism driven by clashes of egos and a desire to show dominance within their villages and regions. Politics gives them the power to assert dominance and this dominance changes with the party in power.
When a faction leader uses the ruling party to take control of a village, the rival group’s leaders and their supporters often leave the village for a few years. But their property remains intact, and their land remains fallow but inviolate. When their party regains power, they return to the village and drive their opponents away.
After Jagan Mohan Reddy came to power in May 2019, hundreds of TDP leaders and supporters from Atmakur and surrounding villages in Palnadu fled their homes and shifted to makeshift camps in Guntur district. Some of them even migrated to Telangana fearing attacks by YSRCP cadres.
YSRCP leaders were elected unopposed in 86 villages in the gram panchayat elections of 2021. A few months before the state assembly elections on May 13 this year, TDP leaders have started returning to their native villages.
