All eyes on high-profile Vizag Lok Sabha seat as heavyweights enter election fray

Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha constituency, a high-profile battleground in Andhra Pradesh, faces issues like land grabbing and poor infrastructure.

The Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha constituency is probably the most high-profile and keenly watched in Andhra Pradesh. This constituency is considered to be prestigious, as Visakhapatnam, the State’s biggest city, is also probably the only city with an innate potential to develop into a cosmopolitan and has all the trappings to become a ‘mega-metropolis’ in the near future.

Though the city’s original inhabitants belonged to the fishermen community, as the city was referred to as a ‘sleepy fishing village’ in the old English Gazetteer of the British Raj, it later became the hub of public sector undertakings.

Visakhapatnam is the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command (ENC), also the proposed zonal headquarters. It has one of the biggest major ports and a flourishing private port. It houses the biggest oil refinery in the country, HPCL, and is home to the largest integrated and shore-based steel plant, the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant.

The establishment of the big PSU and multiple private sector units in the shape of pharma Special Economic Zones has brought in people from all corners of the country. Today, it has a sizeable population of people coming from Kerala, West Bengal, Odisha, Punjab, Bihar, Rajasthan, and even from the north-eastern States.

The unique aspect is that all major political parties, be it the TDP, YSRCP, JSP, Congress, the left parties and even the BJP, have a sizable number of followers in the name of traditional vote bank.

This gives the edge to all the political parties, and this time, the contest between the ruling YSRCP and the TDP-JSP-BJP bloc (NDA) is going to be direct and tough.

The YSRCP has fielded its heavyweight Botcha Jhansi Lakshmi, wife of Education Minister Botcha Satyanarayana and the NDA has fielded M. Sribharat from the TDP.