How Pawan Kalyan backed the winning horse in Andhra

In October last year, a day after Chandrababu Naidu was arrested in the alleged AP Skill Development Corporation scam, actor-turned-politician Konidela Pawan Kalyan put both his political and acting careers on the line when he declared his support to the TDP chief.

The gamble paid off. Not only did Naidu make a spectacular comeback in the state and in the Lok Sabha elections, Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party is set to end up as the second biggest party, with victories in all the 21 seats it contested and pushing the incumbent YSRCP to third position. The JSP, which is in an alliance with the TDP and BJP in the state, is also leading in two Lok Sabha seats. Pawan Kalyan himself won from the Pithapuram Assembly constituency against YSRCP’s Vanga Geetha Viswanath.

Popularly known as ‘Power Star’ for his action roles in films, Kalyan launched the JSP in 2014 but stayed away from the elections that year. Few gave him a chance then, with sceptics drawing parallels to his elder brother K Chiranjeevi’s failed experiment with the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP), which eventually folded up.

In the 2019 Assembly elections, the JSP fared poorly with Kalyan losing from both Bhimavaram and Gajuwaka Assembly constituencies. The only seat his party won that election was Palacole, but the candidate defected to the YSRCP soon after. The loss not only dented Pawan’s image as a politician but also as an actor. Undeterred, Pawan aggressively took on the ruling YSRCP and Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on various issues.

In the second half of 2022, Kalyan launched ‘Jana Vani’, as part of which he held several small public meetings aimed at listening to people’s complaints. On October 19, the state government cracked down on one such meeting at