Visakhapatnam East Witnessing Winds Of Change 

Visakhapatnam East: Visakhapatnam East Assembly constituency - Visakhapatnam East Vidhan Sabha (21) is located in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh and comes under the Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha constituency.

As per the voter list of 2018, there are 2,31,915 electorates and 272 polling stations in this constituency.

Male Voters : 1,15,295

Female Voters : 1,16,605

Others : 15

Kambhampati Hari Babu (BJP) is the present Lok Sabha MP of Visakhapatnam and Ramakrishna Babu Velagapudi (TDP) is the present MLA of Visakhapatnam East Legislative Assembly. Rama Krishna Babu won against Vamsi Krishna Srinivas of the YSRCP with a majority of 47883 votes in 2014 Assembly elections.

Assembly Profile

Once a pleasant place, Visakhapatnam has become a hotbed of crime and rowdy sheeters. The incumbent MLA Ramakrishna Babu Velagapudi of the TDP belongs to the Kamma community and is one of the main accused in the Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga murder case.

He had relocated to Visakhapatnam after the caste conflicts erupted after Ranga's murder.

Ramakrishna was once a small-time audio cassette lender who owned a shop in the Eluru Road in Vijayawada. He was also into conducting illegal businesses and joined Devineni Nehru's coterie in the 80s. After Ranga's murder he migrated to Visakhapatnam and took shelter with Telex paper manufacturer in Sector 6, MVP Colony.

Later he joined a firm called Kiran Ads as a clerk and floated a company called Shirdi Sai Scheme Finance and cheated many people. Not stopping there he got into the Liquor syndicate, started threatening Janapriya Syndicate traders and warned them not to file tenders.

A rowdy sheet was supposed to be opened in his name in the Three-town police station, but he somehow managed to convince the police officials not to.

In the otherwise peaceful town, he brought in rowdies and goondas from Vijayawada as guests and entertained them with Kabbadi games and cock fights . Rowdy politics, which was hitherto unknown to Vizag underwent a sea change with Velagapudi's atrocities.

By sheer luck he won the Visakha east seat on a TDP ticket in 2009 as there weren't many takers for this seat. His atrocities doubled and he started indulging in land grabbing, illegal constructions, extortions.

Apart from which he expanded his liquor mafia network where more than 60 wine shops are under his network and other benamis. It is reported that more than 40,000 bogus votes were deleted from this constituency by the election commission.

Incidentally, Harshavardhan Chowdary, the owner of Fusion Foods, a restaurant in the Visakhapatnam airport, where YS Jagan Mohan Reddy was murderously attacked on October 25, 2018, is a close associate of Velagapudi Ramakrishna Babu.

Akaramani Vijayanirmala profile

Meanwhile YSRCP Candidate Akaramani Vijayanirmala has endeared herself to the constituents of Vizag East though her various social activities. In her capacity as the Bheemili Municipal Councillor, Vice Chairman, Chairperson , she has served the people and won their trust and admiration.

She has been quite vocal about the issues faced by women and has come forward to help them in many occasions.

Political observers feel that she has a good chance of winning in comparison to Velagapudi Ramakrishna whose crime-ridden past could prove his undoing in this assembly election in 2019.

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