Telugu Desam Party (TDP) headed by former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and its alliance partner Jana Sena Party (JSP) headed by Pawan Kalyan announced a combined list of 99 candidates on Saturday for the upcoming Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh.

Speaking to reporters at his residence in Undavalli in Amaravati, Naidu said, “According to the seat sharing agreement between the two parties, JSP would be contesting for 24 seats in the 175-member state assembly. Besides, it would also contest from three Lok Sabha constituencies.”

In the first list of candidates, the TDP has announced its 94 candidates while the JSP released five names.

“We shall announce the names for the remaining 19 seats shortly,” Kalyan said.

Naidu also said, both the parties were still awaiting the response from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on joining the alliance.

“If the BJP comes forward, we shall take a call on allotment of the seats to that party accordingly,” he added.

The first list of 94 candidates belonging to the TDP comprises 17 candidates from Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 18 from Scheduled Castes, four from Scheduled Tribes, 19 from Kapu, one from Velama, four from Kshatriya, 12 from Kamma, 15 from Reddy, two from Vysya, one from minorities and one Balija community.

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The TDP chief said, out of 94 candidates, there are 23 newcomers and 13 women. The list includes 28 candidates with post-graduate degrees, 50 candidate with graduate degrees, 3 doctors, two Ph.D, and one IAS officer.

While Naidu would be contesting from Kuppam constituency in Chittoor district, his son and TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh would fight the elections from Mangalagiri constituency in Guntur district. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law Nandamuri Balakrishna would contest from Hindupur constituency.

Naidu said, the selection of candidates was done after considering the opinion of more than 13.3 million people through interactive voice response system.

“By embracing crowdsourcing, the TDP-JSP alliance aims to decentralise power, placing the aspirations and voices of the people of Andhra Pradesh at the forefront of their political agenda, he added.

The JSP chief said, his party had agreed to contest only in 24 seats keeping in view the broader interests of the state, rather than the interests of the party or individuals.

He said, had JSP won at least 10 seats in the 2019 Assembly elections, he would have demanded more seats from the TDP. However, the party won only one seat.

“There is no point in asking for more seats as part of an alliance and experimenting with them. We thought we would ask for those seats where we have fair chances of winning,” Kalyan said.

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Meanwhile, the general secretary of ruling YSR Congress party and advisor to the Andhra Pradesh government Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy said, the list of 99 candidates released by the TDP-JSP indicated that Kalyan had no independent stature in the Andhra Pradesh politics and that he was only playing a second fiddle to Naidu.

“The Jana Sena has proved to be an affiliated party of the TDP. Instead of agreeing for just 24 seats, it would have been better if Pawan Kalyan merged his party with the TDP,” Reddy said and wondered whether Naidu himself would field the TDP candidates in the seats allotted to Jana Sena.

He further said, even if both TDP and JSP indulged in any kind of theatrics, the people were with the YSRCP, as 87% of them were enjoying the benefits of welfare schemes implemented by chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy.