BJP MP GVL Narasimha Rao and party AP President Kanna Laxminarayana met Chief Electoral Officer Gopala Krishna Dwivedi at AP Secretariat. This was in response to CM Chandrababu Naidu’s protest earlier. The BJP leaders obviously filled the gap that was caused because of the relatively weakened campaign of the YCP. The TDP was on an offensive from the beginning and also on the no-campaign day today.

GVL and Kanna complained to CEO that it was the TDP which was blackmailing all the national institutions not to take against their erring candidates. The BJP has always played its role of ‘A team’ to protect its supporting ‘B team’ which is the YCP. There’s no longer any secrecy of their deal. In his protest, Chandrababu deliberately criticised Modi for all the troubles of AP. But his main target was the YCP and he indeed made a scathing attack on Jaganmohan Reddy. GVL has failed to provide convincing replies on the officials’ transfers. The BJP leaders are trying to do some last minute cover up apparently. Analysts say that there’s considerable gap as the YCP top leaders are not personally present in Amaravati to counter TDP expected offensive.

Pasupuleti Latha Madhavi aka actress Madhavi Latha gets MLA ticket from BJP. She will be contesting from Guntur west. BJP released a list of 177 candidates on Sunday for the assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh. For AP, BJP finalized 123 candidates. ‘Nachavule’ heroine Madhavi latha finds her name in the list.

Madhavi latha was born in Karnataka into a Telugu family and she did MA Sociology. She made her feature film debut with the Telugu romantic film Nachavule in 2008. The movie through which actor Tanish also made debut (as hero), fared well at box office. Later she acted in Tamil also. Last year when Sri Reddy was making scathing attack on Pawan with help of some media channels, she announced a silent protest in support of Pawan but police didn’t allow her protest. Later, she joined BJP before Karnataka elections but she didnt get ticket during Karnataka elections. Now she will be contesting from Guntur west as BJP confirmed her ticket.

We will have to wait and see how many votes she will get.

The BJP has again appointed marketing guru Sam Balsara-led Madison Media to handle its media buying duties for the 2019 general elections.

Madison will create media planning and buying strategy for the BJP for all mass media including print, television and radio, informed sources said on Friday.

They said the campaign will seek to create awareness about the “tranformation” brought into the society by the Modi government through schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana, Mudra, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Swachh Bharat, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Digital India, Skill India, Make in India and more.

A BJP leader familiar with the development said that the party’s campaign would focus on the achievements of the Modi government.

In 2014, advertising agencies such as Soho Square, Piyush Pandey’s Ogilvy & Mather, Prasoon Joshi’s McCann and Madison World had helped the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to storm to power with the biggest election victory for a single party in 30 years.

Soho Square and O&M had also worked on the BJP’s successful campaigns for the Haryana and Maharashtra polls.

The BJP has stuck to Ogilvy & Mather – which created the successful “Ab ki baar Modi sarkaar” campaign in 2014 – as its creative agency and Prasoon Joshi’s McCann to prepare a theme song with patriotic fervour for the party.

Joshi penned the BJP’s theme song for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls titled “Main desh nahi mitne dunga”, which was sung by Sukhwinder Singh.

Andhra Pradesh BJP unit has taken up an all-out fight with DGP RP Thakur, who is in the thick of political controversies ahead of elections. BJP delegation led by AP unit president Kanna Lakshminarayana met with officials of Election Commission of India in Delhi. They explained the ground level issues on the police bias in favour of the TDP. They demanded that AP DGP be transferred from his present post at the time of elections.

BJP spokesman GVL Narasimha Rao has also accused the AP police of acting like the Telugu Desam Party activists rather than the public servants or government employees. Kanna Lakshminarayana told the Election Commission that the TDP government is misusing the official machinery and committing data thefts. The names of voters belonging to non-TDP parties are being deleted from the lists by filing fake form-7 applications, he said.

Kanna said the AP officials are not bothering to take any action though many complaints were made and they were favouring the TDP in all issues. YCP leaders have also complained that the TDP is getting its voters’ names illegally deleted from the lists. Meanwhile, the TDP says it is a larger conspiracy by Jagan, KCR and PM Modi.

Till a few weeks ago, one Dr. Shanta Rao showed lot of interest to contest on the BJP ticket in Palasa assembly segment in Srikakulam district. The district party unit conveyed the same to the party state leadership. But now things took a dramatic turn as Dr. Shanta Rao is no longer interested in this. The reasons are obvious. He found out in his personal surveys that there would be no chance to get bare minimum votes, leave alone deposits.

With this, the BJP leaders are left in a state of shock. They don’t know that their party’s image has taken such a severe beating among AP people. The situation is no better in most assembly segments in the state. Even the Lok Sabha constituencies are also giving a tough time. In the absence of strong aspirants, the BJP state leaders are not able to begin the ticket allotment exercise till now. Worse still, things are getting worse with each passing day.

There is a feeling within the BJP that their campaign style has not yielded any good results so far. The AP people are not believing their leaders’ arguments that the Modi government has fulfilled majority promises of reorganisation. It is also too late for the BJP to change its strategy and renew their attack on rivals.