Visakhapatnam: The port city is faced with a Hobson’s choice in choosing its Lok Sabha member as none of the nominees from the major political parties is a professional politician, barring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has nominated a former MP from Visakhapatnam.The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has fielded M Sribharat, 29, grandson of former MP, MVVS Murthi. His late grandfather had served as the LS member for Visakhapatnam for two terms, the last in the 13th Lok Sabha (1999-2004).This will be Sribharat’s first foray into electoral politics.As for himself, Sribharat is president of Gitam Deemed to be University and appears to have the financial wherewithal to contest, what will be, a very expensive election campaign.The YSR Congress has nominated Mullapudi Veera Venkata Satyanarayana, a prominent builder who has at least two cases of land-grabbing pending against him. Satyanarayana, who also produced a Telugu feature film, which was unsuccessful, in 2017, is a newbie to politics. But he has been associated with the YSRC for a long time, and was rewarded with the party ticket.Meanwhile, the Jana Sena is banking on the reputation for professional integrity of VV Lakshminarayana, a former IPS officer, who too is entering the electoral fray for the first time. The JS candidate also hopes to get the votes of the Kapu community, which forms a significant part of the electorate in the seven assembly segments of the Visakhapatnam parliamentary seat.As for the BJP, it has fielded D Purandeswari, who was the LS member in the 15th Lok Sabha, 2009-2014, and was also a minister in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet.Purandeswari left the Congress and joined the BJP in 2014, and she is being fielded again in Visakhapatnam because K Haribabu, the LS member in the 16th Lok Sabha, decided not to defend his seat.“All the candidates have their roots elsewhere in the state, but have been parachuted into the city. The voters in Visakhapatnam have to decide who they want to represent them in the Lok Sabha. The choice is between a 29-year-old scion of a wealthy family, a real-estate developer with criminal cases to his name, a former policeman who is clearly banking on the caste factor to see him through, and a woman candidate who did not even have an office in the city to meet constituents the last time she was MP,” said K Srirama Murty, a former professor of economics at Andhra University.

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